


Move Heaven, Move Earth

by sahiya



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Heist, Hurt/Comfort, Reverse Big Bang Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:43:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1498804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sara receives bad news about her health, Neal isn't going to let a pesky thing like three months left on his sentence stop him from being there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for round one of the [White Collar Reverse Big Bang Challenge](http://wc-reverse-bb.livejournal.com/). Thanks to Angelita26 for making the awesome art that inspired the story (and then later adapting it!). Thanks as well to Yamx, who gave me an early idea that prompted the rest of the fic, pooh_collector for helping me dig myself out of the plot hole I'd fallen into, and Fuzzyboo for beta reading this monstrosity. Sometimes it truly takes a village. 
> 
> Part 2 will be posted tomorrow. Here's the link to Ang's [art post](http://angelita26.livejournal.com/111069.html). Artists deserve lots of love. Please drop her a note!

Friday mornings between cases were not Neal’s favorite time in the White Collar office. There wasn’t much for him to do, but Peter always made him come in anyway. He spent most of his time watching the clock, waiting to see if he could talk Peter or Jones or Diana into taking a long lunch with him, or possibly just let him go home early. Today, he had a stack of cold case files on his desk, and he was calculating how many of them he’d have to get through before Peter would be satisfied enough to let him go.

His cell phone rang just as he was reaching for the first one. “Neal Caffrey,” he answered absently, reading the top sheet. Mortgage fraud, _ugh._

“Hi Neal.”

“Sara!” he said, straightening in surprise. The two of them had emailed a few times since she’d moved to London, but neither of them had called. Neal didn’t think he even had her number over there. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Sara said, but even just those two words set Neal’s alarm bells ringing. There was something in her voice, something stilted and too tightly controlled. “How are you?”

Neal ignored the question. “What’s wrong?”

There was a moment of silence. Neal imagined Sara struggling with herself. She’d called him, so whatever it was, she wanted to talk about it. But opening up didn’t come any more naturally to her than it did to him - less so, maybe. “How did you know?” she asked at last.

“Your voice. What’s going on?”

“I’m . . .” Sara stopped. “Neal, did I ever tell you how my mom died?”

Neal frowned. Both her parents were dead, he knew, and she’d lost them both before she was twenty-five, but not at the same time. He thought he could count what he knew about either of her parents on one hand. Her mom had been a terrible cook, and she’d mostly checked out after her sister left. Her dad had died in a car accident, but he didn’t think she’d ever told him how her mother had died. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, with a sinking feeling. 

“She died of breast cancer when I was nineteen." 

The pieces suddenly slotted into place. Neal was glad he was already sitting. “Sara,” he said, very quietly, “did you . . . find something? A lump?”

Sara audibly swallowed. “Something like that. I came in for a routine check-up - I never skip them, never, my mom did and they found it too late - and they said there’s something there.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t think - she was older than me, a lot older than me. I thought I had more time -”

“Hey, hey,” Neal said, “stop that. You have lots of time, all right?” Peter walked in just then, caught his eye, and frowned at him for being on his cell phone in the office. Neal ignored him. “Where are you right now?”

“My doctor’s office. They’re getting me a referral. They need to do more tests, make sure it’s actually cancer, find out how big the - the tumor is and whether there’s any cancer in my lymph nodes.”

“Is there anyone you can call?” Neal asked. “Someone who’s there?”

“Not about this. I don’t want anyone at work to know. I thought the New York office was competitive, but they have nothing on the people here. If they found out I was sick, they’d be circling like vultures in no time.” She drew a deep breath. “I’m fine. I don’t know why I called you, it’s not like you can do anything for me from within your radius.”

“Sara -”

“Look, my doctor’s back. I’ll talk to you later, Caffrey.” She disconnected, leaving Neal holding his phone. 

Peter was still standing in front of him, Neal realized. But his frown had changed from disapproving to worried. “Is everything okay?” he asked. 

Neal hesitated. Sara clearly didn’t want anyone to know. But she was right; he couldn’t do anything for her in his current circumstances. If he was going to be able to help her, he was going to have to tell Peter. Not to mention that he was very quietly freaking out. This wasn’t something he wanted to have to shoulder alone.

“We need to talk,” Neal said. 

Peter nodded. “Give me five minutes, all right?”

Neal spent those five minutes at his desk, looking up flights to London and entertaining foolish fantasies of just getting on a plane and _going_. It was impossible, he knew. He was three months out from the end of his sentence; Sara would kill him if he risked more jail time for her, and the last thing she needed was to add “harboring a fugitive” to her list of things to do. But there was no way the Marshals were going to let him go legally, and Interpol might not even let him back into the EU if they did. 

At the end of the five minutes, Neal wiped his browser history and went up to see Peter. “Hey, come in,” Peter said. Neal shut the door behind him and took his usual seat in front of Peter’s desk. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Neal didn’t even know what to say to that. “I got a call from Sara this morning,” he finally said. “Right before you came in. She, um. She had a doctor’s appointment, and they found something. A lump in her breast.”

Peter leaned back in his chair and wiped a hand over his mouth. “Jesus. Are they sure it’s cancer?”

Neal shook his head. “But her mom died of breast cancer when she was nineteen, so she thinks the odds are pretty high. Peter, she has no one there. No one. The only people she knows in London are from Sterling-Bosch and she doesn’t even want them to know she’s sick.”

Peter sighed, sounding regretful. “Neal, I can’t let you go to London. Not now. In three months, you’ll be a free man. I can pull some strings, make sure you get a new passport right away, and you can go then.”

“Three months isn’t good enough,” Neal said. Three months sounded like years to him just then, when all he could think about was Sara, alone and frightened - and she _was_ frightened, no amount of gruff bluster from her would convince him otherwise. She was frightened, and she’d called him. And he couldn’t do a damn thing to help her.

Peter grimaced. “It’s going to have to be, and don’t think it doesn’t make me feel like a heartless bastard to tell you that. Look, has she thought at all about coming back to New York? Some of the best doctors in the world are here.”

“I don’t think she’s thought about anything yet. This just happened. She called me from her doctor’s office. Peter,” he said, sitting forward, “please. Think about how you’d feel if it were El. You’d move heaven and earth to get to where she was.”

“I would,” Peter allowed. “But I’d also know that she wouldn’t want me to do anything stupid, and you know Sara wouldn’t either.” 

Neal looked away; not only was Peter right, it was no more than Neal had been thinking earlier. “What about commutation? They almost offered it before.”

Peter shook his head. “The bureaucracy wouldn’t move fast enough for it to make a difference at this point. I doubt we could get a hearing before your release date.”

“What about a case, then?” Neal asked, hating how desperate he sounded. “We have to have something with a London connection.”

Peter gave him a look. “We’d need a lot more than a London connection to justify making the trip. That’s Interpol’s territory.”

Neal swallowed. “Peter, if it was El, you know you wouldn’t let anything stop you.”

Peter sighed. “Neal, if it was El, I’d have a piece of paper that legally binds me to her, and I’m not sure even that would make a difference. As things stand with you and Sara, as far as the FBI is concerned, this is a woman you dated two years ago and haven’t seen at all in over a year. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way I could sell it.” He leaned forward. “Listen to me, Neal. You are three months from the end of your sentence. In twelve weeks, you’ll be free and clear, and I will see to it that you’re able to get on a plane to London the day after you get the anklet off. But until then, my hands are tied. Please, please, don’t do anything stupid. Do you understand me?”

“I do,” Neal said, looking down. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “I know it’s not enough. But if you keep your nose clean, in three months you’ll be able to go without a massive manhunt following you.”

“What about Interpol surveillance?” Neal asked, taking a stab at lightening the mood a little. He didn’t think he much succeeded. 

“No promises there,” Peter said with a small smile. “Now, are you going to be able to work today, or should I just send you home?”

“I’ll be okay,” Neal said. The thought of sitting in his apartment all day, dwelling on his options - or lack thereof - was distinctly unappealing. “Though it might help if there was something more interesting than mortgage fraud on my desk.”

Peter gave him a wry look. “I’ll see what I can do.”

What he could do was an art forgery case someone in DC (not Phil Kramer, thank God) had asked for input on. It was much more distracting than mortgage fraud, and Neal got deeply involved enough that he missed lunch. Before he knew it, it was three o’clock. Peter took his notes from him and told him to head home; they’d pick up again on Monday. Neal knew he was being lenient with him, and part of him wanted to resist; after all, he wasn’t the one who was sick. But once he’d surfaced from the work, he wanted badly to call Sara and see how she was. 

“Hey,” Peter said, just as Neal was about to leave. “Come over for dinner tomorrow, all right?”

Neal shrugged. “Sure. Want me to bring anything?”

Peter shook his head. “Just yourself. Have a good night. Tell Sara hello from me.”

“I will,” Neal said, and left. 

He thought about calling her as soon as he was on the street, but he didn’t. He waited until he was in his apartment at June’s, then called her back using the number she’d called him from that morning. His cell phone bill would be astronomical this month, he thought with a wince. 

“Hi Neal,” Sara said, sounding tired. 

“Hey,” Neal said. And then, because he didn’t know what else to say, “How are you?”

Sara gave a brief, mirthless laugh. “My life is nothing but puppies and rainbows right now, Caffrey. How do you think I am?”

“I don’t know,” Neal said, refusing to let her tone get to him. “That’s why I asked.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she sighed. “I’m tired. I can’t concentrate on anything. And I’m pissed.”

“About what?” 

“About _what_?” she replied sharply. “Gee, I don’t know, Neal. I’m pissed that through some stupid roll of the genetic dice, I have cancer. I’m pissed that my life is about to be completely disrupted. And I’m frankly furious that when push came to shove, the person I called was _you_.” 

Her voice broke on the last word. Her breathing was rough and ragged. Neal said nothing, waiting for her to get herself under control. Then he asked, “Are you still at work?” It was almost nine o’clock in London, but he knew Sara well enough to know that that didn’t mean anything. 

“Yes. My appointment this afternoon took almost three hours.”

“Go home,” he said. 

“Caffrey -” she said with an exasperated sigh.

“Repo,” he replied, “ _go home_. When you get there, change into something comfortable, make yourself something to eat, and sign on to Skype. I’ll meet you there, okay? My government stipend, such as it is, doesn’t cover international cell phone calls.”

She gave a brief laugh. “All right.”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “Really?” He hadn’t actually thought that would work.

“Yes, really. I’m closing my laptop now.”

“Okay. See you in a bit, then.” Neal disconnected. 

It would take Sara at least a few minutes to get home, so he followed his own advice, changing into track pants and a button down, then making himself a sandwich. He ate it in front of his computer. He kept Skype open in the background, waiting for Sara to sign online, but in the meantime he ignored it in favor of some research. A germ of an idea was starting to take root. Peter might have given him a loophole without realizing it. 

He shut his browser down when Skype chimed. “Hi,” he said, and found himself smiling, pleased to see her face after so long. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. 

“Hi yourself.” She had a salad in front of her, as well as a mug of something, Neal saw with satisfaction. “I’m sorry about before,” she said, only a little awkwardly. “I’m not actually furious that I called you. Though you might be wishing I hadn’t,” she added with a grimace.

“Never,” Neal said firmly. “I’m glad you called me. I just wish I was there.”

Sara shook her head. “So you could do what? Go with me to my doctor’s appointments? Hold my hand? Hold my hair while I puke from chemo?”

“Yes.” 

She looked startled for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, you can’t,” she said. “And you probably won’t have to, anyway. My doctor said he couldn’t tell me anything for certain, but he said he didn’t think they’d want to do chemo. They usually don’t for early stage breast cancer, these days.” She was quiet for a moment, using her fork to move food around on her plate. “He said things have changed a lot since my mom was diagnosed. The treatments are a lot better, and so are the outcomes. And I know that’s true, I just . . . I haven’t thought about that time in my life in years, I guess. And now I can’t _stop_ thinking about it.” She gave a brief, humorless laugh. “I guess that’s the downside to avoidance.”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m the poster child for avoidance.”

She laughed, more genuinely this time, then sighed. “Okay, enough of this. How was your day?”

“More interesting than I expected,” Neal said, and proceeded to her tell her about the art forgery case. It was exactly the sort of thing she enjoyed, and Neal could see her starting to relax while she listened. She even started eating; at first she only nibbled around the edges of her salad, but by the time he wound down, it was mostly gone. 

“Never a dull moment for you guys, is there?” Sara asked at last. 

“I don’t know, last week Peter kept pushing insurance fraud at me.” Neal hesitated. “He said to say hi by the way.”

Sara flinched minutely. “Did you tell him?”

There was no point in lying. “I did.”

Sara visibly gritted her teeth. “Damn it, Neal, I really didn’t want people to know.”

Neal held his hands up. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I wanted to know if there was any way I could get to London before my sentence was up. Turns out the answer is a big, fat, bureaucratic _no_ , in case you were wondering.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “I could have told you that. Besides, it isn’t necessary. I’m going to be fine.”

“I know you will,” Neal said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be there for you.” He hesitated, wondering if he dared ask. “Have you thought about coming back here for treatment?”

Sara shook her head. “It’d raise too many red flags at work.”

Neal frowned. “Sara, is that really what matters right now?”

“Well, since they’re the ones who are providing the insurance that’s _paying_ for the treatment,” Sara said, with an edge to her voice, “yeah, I think it is does matter.”

“But -”

“Don’t, Neal,” she said sharply. “I refuse to let this change my life. I’m not moving across an ocean, and I’m not taking medical leave from my job, not for this. Whatever this is, I’m stronger. It doesn’t get to change me.”

“No one’s saying you aren’t stronger than it is,” Neal said. “But I hate the thought of you going through this alone.”

Sara’s mouth tightened. “I was alone for a long time before we met, Neal, and I did all right. I appreciate the concern, but don’t take this as an invitation to coddle me. I don’t need to be taken care of.”

Neal hadn’t gotten as far as he had with Sara Ellis without knowing when to back off. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right, of course. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I’m worried, that’s all. You can’t blame me for that.”

She seemed to relax, fractionally. “No,” she conceded. “I’m worried, too.”

“When’s your next appointment?” Neal asked. 

“Monday morning. I had to move a meeting,” she added, sounding annoyed. “But my doctor didn’t want me to waste any time, and I didn’t want to, either.”

She changed the subject then, to a case one of her investigators was working, and Neal let her. They talked until she started to droop, and then Neal wished her a good night and signed off. 

It was after six by then, and his apartment was getting dark. Neal turned a light on, texted Mozzie, and went back to his research. By the time Mozzie knocked at the door in iambic pentameter, Neal had a page of notes and the beginning of a plan. It wasn’t brilliant as plans went; it depended on Peter being either unusually gullible or unusually permissive, and Neal didn’t like to bet the house on that. But it was the only thing he’d been able to come up with so far. 

“Happy Friday,” Mozzie greeted him, holding up a bottle of wine. “I come bearing libations to celebrate your two day reprieve from oppression.”

Neal rolled his eyes, but he was glad to see the wine after the day he’d had. He got some bread and cheese out while Moz uncorked it, and considered how to approach the project with Mozzie. Neal had the feeling he wasn’t going to love it for any number of reasons. 

It was, in the end, a moot point. Neal turned around and found Moz in front of his laptop, reading his notes. “Ahem,” Neal said, pointedly. 

Mozzie looked unrepentant. “You invited me in, and it was lying in plain view.”

“We’re operating by warrant law now?” Neal said, handing Mozzie his glass of wine.

“That depends,” Mozzie said, seating himself at the table. “Why are you looking into how to forge a marriage license? Is there something I should know?”

Neal took a healthy sip of wine before answering. Then he told Mozzie everything - about how Sara had called him that morning, the news she’d had, about what Peter had said: _If it were El, I’d have a piece of paper that legally binds me to her._ “She won’t come back to New York,” Neal said at last, before Mozzie could ask. “And I can’t stand the idea of her going through this alone.”

Mozzie sighed. “I’m sorry, man, I really am. No part of this isn’t awful. But think about it, Neal. We can forge the license, sure, but that’s only part of it. Do you really think Peter would buy you having kept this a secret from him for so long? And even if he did, he’d check it out. He’s not just going to take it on faith.”

“I know,” Neal said. “The files at the county registrar’s office are mostly electronic now. Do you think your friend Sally could hack them?”

Mozzie crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at Neal. “Possibly. But then - once you forge it _and_ hack the files - you’re actually married as far as the state of New York is concerned. Not to mention that _Peter_ will think you’re married, so if you unhack the files later, it’ll be pretty damn obvious. What do you have to say about that? And after all of that,” Mozzie went on, before Neal could reply, “do you really think it will work? Do you think they’d just let you waltz off to London with three months left on your sentence because your wife is sick?”

“I don’t know,” Neal said, impatiently. “Officially, probably not, but if Peter thought we were married, he might be more willing to pull what strings he can.”

“And Sara,” Moz said, as though Neal hadn’t spoken. “What do you think Sara’s going to say when she finds out that you up and married her without asking first? I don’t know Sara Ellis as well as you do, but my guess is that she’ll nail your ass to the wall.”

“She can nail my ass to the wall all she wants. At least she won’t be alone in everything. And afterward, like you said, we can unhack it.”

“And tell Peter what? That you got a divorce?” Mozzie threw his hands up in the air. “Neal. You need to think about this. If you get caught forging a marriage license, they could put you away for years. _Now_ , when you’re almost free. Tell me, how much help would you be to Sara then?”

Neal glared. “You’re urging caution now?”

“Yes,” Mozzie said. “Three months, Neal! _Three months._ I realize you have the impulse control of a child, but surely even you can do the math.”

“So what are you saying? You won’t help me?”

Moz sighed. “If you really want me to . . . actually, no, even if you really want me to, I’m not going to help you do this. Because the plan probably won’t work, and even the best case scenario isn’t all that great.”

Neal scowled. If Moz wouldn’t help him, especially on the tech side, then it was dead in the water. “Okay, fine. What do you think I should do?”

Mozzie took a thoughtful sip of wine, then leaned back. “Mrs. Suit.” 

Neal blinked. “What?”

Mozzie tilted his wine glass toward Neal. “Talk to Mrs. Suit. If you win her over, you’ll be halfway to winning Peter over.”

“Over to what?” Neal asked with a sigh. 

Mozzie shrugged. “That’s up to him.”

***

Dinner at the Burkes’ on a Saturday night almost always meant Peter’s pot roast, since El usually worked Saturday afternoons. Neal took a bottle of red wine that wouldn’t offend Peter’s tastes and a bouquet of flowers for Elizabeth. A good night’s sleep and some time to think had cleared Neal’s head, and he’d realized that Mozzie was right. Forging the marriage certificate had certain advantages, but it’d probably end with either Peter or Sara - or both - furious with him, and it had a good chance of landing him back in prison with an extended sentence. 

El was just walking up from the opposite direction when Neal arrived. “Hey,” he said, stopping to wait for her at the bottom of the front steps. He greeted her with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and held the flowers out to her. “How are you?”

“Tired,” El said, but smiled as she buried her nose in the flowers. “Weddings always take it out of me. They’re not as logistically difficult as other kinds of events, but they can be so emotionally draining. But it’s Saturday night,” she added with a smile, “and I’m not working at all tomorrow.” 

“I hope you don’t mind that Peter invited me,” Neal said, as El dug her keys out of her purse. 

“Oh, sweetie, never,” she said, turning to look at him. “Especially after the news you got yesterday. How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” Neal said, following her inside. He took a deep breath: definitely pot roast. He could hear Peter, too, rattling around in the kitchen. Something that had been hard and tight and anxious inside of him for the last day and a half suddenly let go. 

“Hi, hon!” El called to the kitchen. _Hi, hon!_ floated back, but Peter didn’t immediately appear. “Really?” El said to Neal, slipping off her coat. 

Neal shrugged. “I’m as okay as I could be. It sounds like they caught it early, though, so that’s good.”

“That’s great,” El said. “I’m glad to hear that. Peter was pretty low on details when he told me. Listen, I’m going to run upstairs and get changed, all right? I’ll be right down.”

She went upstairs, and Neal headed into the kitchen with the flowers and the wine. He found Peter chopping vegetables at the kitchen island. “Hey,” he said, glancing up. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” Neal said, and started poking around in the cupboards for a vase. “Pot roast?”

“Almost done,” Peter confirmed. “How was your day?”

“Quiet,” Neal said as he finally unearthed both a vase and then a pair of kitchen shears. He began snipping off the ends of the stems and arranging the flowers more to his liking in the vase. 

“Did you talk to Sara?”

Neal shook his head. “No. I’ll text her tomorrow, but she wouldn’t appreciate me hovering.”

“No, I guess she wouldn’t.”

They were both quiet for a moment, with just the sounds of Peter’s knife slicing through carrots and the _snip, snip_ of Neal’s kitchen shears. “I think I owe you an apology,” Peter said at last. 

Neal looked up. “For what?”

“I think I handled things badly yesterday, when you told me. Not as your handler,” he added, when Neal started to shake his head, “but as your friend. As your handler, it was my job to tell you that there was nothing I could do. But as your friend . . .”

“As my friend, it was your job to remind me not to do anything stupid that would land me back in prison,” Neal said. “Moz did the same thing last night when he found out.”

Peter blinked. “He did?” Neal nodded. “Well, that’s . . . unexpected.”

“Moz is good at seeing the big picture,” Neal said, poking a long-stemmed rose into the vase.

“I guess that is true,” Peter said. Neal could feel him looking at him, but he carefully didn’t respond. “I guess I was just surprised,” Peter said at last. “I didn’t know you and Sara still talked, much less had the sort of relationship where she’d call you for something like this.”

 _Me neither_ , Neal thought, but he didn’t say it. He’d had a lot of time to think, and he’d realized Moz was right. Forging the marriage license was too complicated, and _unforging_ it later even more so. But forging a relationship, a serious one, was well within Neal’s power. It was much harder to argue about emotion and intent than it was about state and federal documents. Sara might still kill him if - when - she found out, but Neal thought it was likely to be a less painful and shorter-lived death than if she found out he’d married her without asking. 

“I never said anything,” Neal said, still looking at the flowers. “It didn’t seem like there was any point to saying anything while she was in London and I was on the anklet. And with everything that happened right afterward, with Pratt and my father and you getting arrested - there was never a good time to tell you.”

“A good time to tell me what?” Peter asked, straightening up and giving Neal his full attention. 

Neal heard Elizabeth’s footsteps on the stairs, and he waited until she appeared in the doorway to speak. “That day at the Empire State Building,” Neal said. “The fake proposal. It wasn’t fake.”

Peter dropped the knife he was holding. “ _What_ ”

“Neal!” El exclaimed. “You’ve been engaged all this time, and you never said anything?”

Neal shrugged. “It was supposed to be fake,” he said, looking mostly at the flowers to hide his face. “I had this whole speech planned out that was about two people I’d made up in my head. And then I looked at her, standing there, and I wanted it to be real.” He swallowed. “But it was later, when we were up at the top, that I told her I was serious. She was going to London and I was staying here, but I wouldn’t be on the anklet forever. And there was no one else I wanted to be with once it was off.”

Most of it wasn’t even a lie, Neal reflected. He _had_ changed his mind about the proposal at the last minute, and he _had_ wanted it to be real. But he hadn’t quite had the courage to go that extra step. He’d known what Sara would say. Or at least, he’d thought he’d known. He wondered now. 

“So you’re saying that all this time,” Peter said, “you and Sara have been _engaged_?”

“Yeah,” Neal said, turning to look at him at last. “I am. I know it doesn’t change anything,” he added with a shrug, “but that’s why she called me.”

“Hon,” Elizabeth said, turning to look at Peter, “there must be something you can do.”

“To take a convicted felon still serving his sentence out of the country?” Peter said with a grimace. “That’s a pretty tall order. Did you ask Sara about coming back to New York?”

“I did. She said it’d raise too many red flags at Sterling Bosch. She really doesn’t want anyone there to know.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “This isn’t the sort of thing you can hide. At the very least she’ll need to take some time off to have surgery.”

“She’ll find a way to hide it, I’m sure,” Neal said. “But that’s why I have to be there, Peter. She has no one she can even tell over there, much less anyone she’ll let help her when she needs it.”

“And she will need it,” El said, seriously. Neal glanced at her, curious. “A good friend of mine from college was diagnosed a few years ago. She was a single parent at the time, so a bunch of us took turns going to stay with them while she was getting treatment. They caught it early and she’s fine now, but it was rough for a while.”

Neal nodded. “All I’m asking is for you to think about it,” he said to Peter. “If there’s no way, there’s no way. I won’t run, and I won’t do anything else rash or stupid. But if there is a way to get me over there, even just for a little while . . .”

Peter sighed. “It really isn’t that I don’t want to. I hope you know that. But it’d have to be one hell of a case for me to be able to sell it to the higher-ups. I’m pretty sure the only way I could is if Interpol actually asked for you, specifically. I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“But you will look into it,” El said pointedly. “Won’t you, hon?”

Peter looked chagrined. Neal managed to hide his smile. “I will look into it,” he promised. He stood just looking at Neal for a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were engaged.”

“We both had a few other things to think about at the time,” Neal muttered. “Besides, it’s not like there was any chance we were going to get married before my sentence was up.”

“You could, you know.”

“Other than the fact that we’d both have to be in the same country?”

“Well, there is that,” Peter admitted. “You and Sara have always done things your own way. But I’m happy for you, I really am.”

“Me too, sweetie,” El said, and hugged him. “If and when you guys need a wedding planner -”

“You’ll be first on our list,” Neal said with a grin. 

For a moment, it felt very real. As cons went, Neal thought, this one involved very little deception, and he could easily imagine a world in which everything he’d just told Peter and Elizabeth was true. He felt vaguely guilty for deceiving them; it’d been a while now since he’d lied to Peter about anything important, and they were both clearly so happy for him. But ultimately, he didn’t regret it. If it made Peter even the slightest bit more likely to let him go to London, it was worth it. 

Still, Neal was relieved that his engagement wasn’t the topic of conversation for the rest of the evening. He was able to relax, listening as Peter complained about the amount of paperwork involved in being ASAC, complaints that were so well-trod by now that Neal could almost recite them word for word, and El talked about a few big events she had coming up. Neal was glad for the normalcy after the stress of the last day and a half. He was tempted to drink more than usual, but he stopped after his second glass of wine, and turned down their offer of the guest bedroom for the night. He had some things he needed to do once he got home.

“Neal, do you think Sara would mind if I called her?” El asked, as he put his jacket on in the foyer. “It seems like she could use a friend right now.”

Neal hesitated. On the one hand, El was right, but on the other hand, if El called her she’d inevitably congratulate her on the engagement. “Let me talk to her first,” he said at last. “She’s been sort of prickly about people knowing, and I think she’s hoping to just ignore the whole thing as much as possible. But I’ll see what I can do.”

El nodded. “Thanks.” 

Neal wished both of them a good night, then headed outside, where his cab was waiting for him. On the way home, he texted Moz: _Where are you?_

_Enjoying the 2002 petite syrah you had stashed behind your inferior wines_. 

Neal rolled his eyes even as he typed. _I’ll be home in 20. We need to talk._

“Well?” Moz said when Neal walked in. “Did Mr. and Mrs. Suit believe you?”

“Yeah,” Neal said with a sigh. He fetched a wine glass from the kitchenette, and Mozzie poured him a glass. “They did. Though now I need to talk to Sara. El wants to call her and offer moral support, and I’d prefer Sara not find out that we’re engaged from anyone other than me.”

“That does seem like it would be sub-optimal,” Moz agreed. “But I’m guessing from your face that this didn’t get you as far as you’d hoped with the Suit.”

Neal shook his head. “I think Peter’s hands are genuinely tied on this. But he did say that it _might_ be possible if Interpol asked for me specifically.”

“Huh,” Moz said, sitting back in his chair. “That’s interesting. Any thoughts on how to make that happen?”

“Yes, actually,” Neal said. “Can you get in touch with Gordon Taylor?”

Mozzie’s eyebrows shot up. “Maybe. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” Neal said slowly, “that he might be interested in taking a job in London this time of year.”

***

Sara’s reaction when Neal confessed that he’d told Peter they were engaged was more or less what Neal had expected. He told her over Skype on Sunday morning, and her face immediately darkened in anger. 

“Caffrey, I could just - why would you do that? You knew nothing good would come of it, and now Peter thinks we’re engaged. _Engaged_.”

“I thought it might help,” Neal replied, forcing himself not to be defensive in the face of her ire. “I thought maybe Peter just needed a push. But it seems like his hands really are tied on this.”

“Well, I could have told you that,” Sara snapped. “You’re a _felon_ , Neal. I know you don’t think of yourself that way, but that is your actual legal status.”

“Yes, I know, thank you,” Neal replied, testily this time. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know. El wants to call you -”

“And you wanted to make sure I knew about our ‘engagement’,” Sara finished, putting air quotes around the words. She rolled her eyes. “Why are you doing this anyway?”

“I told you -”

“No, Neal, _why_? We’ve been broken up for over a year and it’s not like we’ve communicated very much since I moved to London. Why are you suddenly busting your ass to try and get here to be with me?”

Neal actually had to stop and think, before finally deciding to answer her question with one of his own. “Why did you call me when you found out?” 

Sara blinked. “I - I don’t know. I didn’t know who else to call. And . . .” She stopped. 

“What did you think?” Neal asked, gently, but not so gently it’d annoy her. 

“I wanted to hear your voice," Sara admitted. "Now stop deflecting. Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”

“Because I care about you,” Neal said. “And because when I think back on that moment at the top of the Empire State Building - I know what I told Peter didn’t actually happen, but there’ve been so many times when I’ve wished it had. I wish I’d told you I meant it, because I did.”

Sara’s eyes were suddenly bright. “Are you asking me to marry you, Caffrey?”

“No,” Neal said, quickly. “But I am asking you to let me be there for you, as much as I can.”

Sara was quiet for a minute. Her eyes cut away from the camera on her laptop, and Neal couldn’t read her face. “All right,” she said at last. “But if Peter said no -”

“Peter didn’t say no. He said there would have to be very specific circumstances in order for it to work. And I think that’s probably as much as I should tell you.” If Neal played his cards right, no actual laws would be broken. But manipulating the FBI and Interpol to get what he wanted was definitely a gray area, and he didn’t think Sara should be in the position of knowing about it.

Sara sighed. “Just don’t get arrested, all right?”

“I won’t,” Neal promised her. Sara didn’t look particularly reassured. “Can I let El know she can call you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sara said. “It’d be nice to talk to her. Look, I have to go - I’m still catching up from missing so much work on Friday.”

“Call me tomorrow after you appointment?”

“Yeah, I will. Have a good day, Neal.”

“You, too.” Neal waited until she’d disconnected, then turned off Skype and lay back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and slowly turning plans over in his head. 

Moz had said he’d get in touch with Taylor and let him know what Taylor said. There weren’t many people Neal would trust to help him with something like this, but Gordon Taylor was a gentleman _and_ a thief, and Neal thought he’d understand. Not to mention that Neal would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t intrigued by the idea of planning another heist with Gordon. 

Neal spent the day puttering around his apartment, painting a little, cooking a little. He went out for a run in the late afternoon, through the park and back again. Running had always activated his imagination, and he found himself thinking: What if he actually had asked Sara to marry him that day at the Empire State Building? He hadn’t wanted her to feel he was trying to get her to stay. He’d _wanted_ her to go. But if he had asked her to marry him, he wondered if everything would be different now if he had. 

Mozzie was waiting for him when he returned, drinking a Syrah that Neal had hidden away for a rainy day. Neal sighed and went to hydrate with a glass of water at the sink. “Well?” he said. 

“Taylor’s interested in meeting. He said it’s been a while since he was last in London.”

“How much did you tell him about the circumstances?”

“Enough. I said you had a friend in London who was sick and you needed a reason to be over there. I did point out the danger inherent in planning a heist the feds _have_ to know about, but he said he’d been looking for a new challenge.”

Neal finished his glass of water and fetched a wine glass down from the top shelf before sitting at the table. Mozzie slid him the bottle. “You think it’s insane.”

“Less insane than forging a marriage license,” Moz said. “I think - well, it’ll be interesting. What’s your game plan?”

Neal shrugged. “Peter doesn’t know that Gordon knows I work for the FBI, so it won’t raise his eyebrows too much if Gordon approaches me about a job. Meanwhile, a couple well-placed rumors catch Interpol’s attention, and before you know it, Interpol asks for me specifically - just like Peter said would need to be the case.”

“The timing will make him suspicious.” 

“Yeah, but . . . well, I think Peter wants to find a way to get me over there,” Neal said, contemplatively. “He’ll be suspicious but I also think he’ll overlook his suspicion.” He hoped so, anyway. It was hard to know where Peter would fall. He might have a sudden attack of self-righteousness, in which case Neal was probably busted. But Neal hadn’t done anything lately to put him on his guard, so Peter might decide to look the other way. Or find a way to let him know he knew what Neal was doing, but as long as nothing _actually_ got stolen in the end, he didn’t care. 

That would be the tricky part, Neal thought. If anything actually got stolen in all of this, Peter would nail his ass to the wall, and with only three months on his sentence, that was the last thing he wanted. So he had to somehow convince Gordon to take the job but also prevent the job from actually going down. Preferably without getting Gordon arrested, because Neal really didn’t need to be the guy who got Gordon Taylor sent to prison. 

Mozzie shook his head. Then he shoved a piece of paper at him before standing. “Date, time, and place of the meeting. I hope you know what you’re doing, _mon frère_ ,” he said. With which parting shot, he swallowed the last of his wine and walked out. 

Gordon must have already been in New York, or at least somewhere on the eastern seaboard, because the meeting was for the next day. The location was a billiard hall, but not the same one as last time. It was within Neal’s radius, which might have been pure coincidence or might have meant Gordon had been doing his homework. 

The hall was empty when Neal walked in at seven o’clock on Monday morning, aside from a lone figure at the far end of the room, shooting billiards. “Long time, no see,” Neal said, striding over. 

“Neal!” Gordon said, sounding genuinely delighted. He came around the table and gave Neal one of his patented hug-slash-pat downs. “I was glad to hear from Mozzie. How are you?”

“I’m well, thanks. Yourself?”

“Very well. Do you have time for a game?”

“I’m afraid not - my handler wants me in at eight o’clock sharp.”

“Ah, yes.” Gordon paused to chalk the end of his cue. “You’re almost done with your sentence, aren’t you? That’s what Mozzie said.”

“Three months,” Neal said. He watched Gordon set up and take an impossible shot, knocking two balls in at once. “Gordon, I’m sure Moz told you why I asked to meet with you.”

“He did,” Gordon said. “He said you had a friend in London who was ill, and you were looking for a reason palatable to the FBI that you might visit before your sentence is up.”

Neal nodded. “My fiancée, Sara. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last week.”

Gordon’s eyes widened, just slightly. “I’m sorry to hear that, Neal.”

“Thank you,” Neal said. “Do you think you might be able to help me out?”

Gordon leaned against the side of the billiard table. “What did you have in mind?”

“Go to London,” Neal said. “Take a job that would require my skills. I’ll tell Peter, my handler, that you approached me before you left, but you didn’t give me any details. While you’re over there, make sure that Interpol gets some inkling of what you’re doing, but not enough, obviously, to put a stop to things. Make it known that you’re considering a job and you want me on the team. Do you think you could do that?”

“Of course. You don’t evade prison for as long as I have without knowing a thing or two about the global intelligence network. Any preferences on the job itself?”

Neal shook his head. “Art, maybe. But anything from the Tate to a private collection would do.” He took a deep breath. “But there’s a catch.”

“I thought there might be.” 

Neal looked him in the eye. “The heist can’t actually happen. I have cash, I can pay you what the job would have been worth to you, but it can’t go down.”

Gordon hummed. “Now, you see, that doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”

“Gordon, I can’t get arrested again. I have three months left on my sentence. Peter would kill me. _Sara_ would kill me.”

Gordon eyed him carefully. “You’re leaving our ranks, aren’t you, Neal? This is it for you.”

Neal hadn’t known it for sure. He’d thought about it both ways often enough: what it would be like to go straight, what it would be like to go back, older and wiser and infinitely more knowledgeable about how the FBI caught men like him. He’d given Peter a lot over the years, maybe more than he should have, but Peter had given _him_ a lot, too. 

But . . . Sara.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.” 

“Well, then,” Gordon said. He leaned on his pool cue and slung his arm around Neal’s shoulders. “If this is it - Neal Caffrey’s last heist - then I think we should make it a good one. Don’t you?”

Deep down, Neal knew he was being conned. Knew it, and didn’t care. “I can’t get caught.” 

“You know me, Neal,” Gordon said. “No one gets caught -”

“- and everyone gets paid,” Neal finished. 

“That’s right. Now, are you in?”

Neal took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m in.”

“Excellent,” Gordon said, and squeezed Neal’s shoulders once before letting his arm drop. “This is going to be fun, Neal. I promise you that. Now I’m off to London - but I’ll be in touch.” He shrugged into his jacket and turned to grin at Neal, his smile conman-bright. “You won’t regret this, I promise.”

Neal nodded. But it was only after Gordon left that he let out the breath he’d been holding and muttered, to himself and the empty billiard hall, “I really hope I don’t.”

Sara texted Neal while he was walking into the FBI building about an hour later. _Oncologist did a biopsy. No results yet but he thinks it’s probably c. Don’t call me, I’m fine. Meetings all afternoon and I’m working late._

Well, Neal thought, as he waited for the elevator with a pack of other people, that was pretty easy to parse: _I’m freaked out but suppressing, so don’t remind me by showing concern._ Pressed up against the back of the elevator, he texted back: _Okay. Let me know when you have the results._

He didn’t get an answer back, but he also didn’t really expect one. 

He ended up being ten minutes late to the office - not that it really mattered, since the weekly meeting wasn’t until nine anyway. His tardiness still won him a _look_ from Peter, followed by a double finger point. But when Neal rolled his eyes and headed up to Peter’s office, Peter didn’t say a word about it. 

“How are you doing?” Peter asked instead, shutting the door behind him. 

“I’m okay,” Neal said with a shrug. “Sara had a doctor’s appointment today. I guess the oncologist did a biopsy, so they still don’t know for sure. But I got all this via text, so I really have no idea.”

Peter sighed. “I’m sure that’s hard.”

“Yeah, it is,” Neal said, letting a little resentment creep into his voice. But Peter looked so guilty that he had to soften. “Tell El it’s okay for her to call Sara. I think Sara would appreciate it.”

Peter nodded. “Okay, I will.”

“One other thing,” Neal said. “The reason I was late this morning - it wasn’t because I was Skyping with Sara. Gordon Taylor contacted me yesterday via Mozzie and asked for a meet.”

Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Neal! You should have told me.”

“Why, so you’d fit me out with a wire and a mike?” Neal shook his head. “It’s Taylor. He’s not dangerous. You’ve sent me in with him before with no backup.”

“Okay,” Peter said, slowly. “What’d he want?”

“Me,” Neal said, preening a little. “Or rather, my skills. He wasn’t very specific, but he’s got a job coming up, wanted to know if I might be interested.”

“And you said?” Peter prompted him. 

“Yes, of course,” Neal said, affronted. “You don’t say ‘no’ to Gordon Taylor, Peter.”

Peter drummed his fingers on the edge of the table, eyeing Neal. “And he doesn’t know - he doesn’t suspect at all that you were the reason we almost caught him at Yankee Stadium?”

Neal shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to, or if he does, he has a weird way of showing it.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “Well, keep me posted - next time he contacts you,” he added, pointing his finger at Neal, “I want to know about it sooner than later. I don’t like the idea of you going in without backup, even if he’s not supposed to be dangerous.”

“Right,” Neal said. He headed back to his desk to prep some notes for the meeting, now only about twenty minutes away. And if he felt guilty for lying to Peter - well, that was a feeling he had a lot of practice ignoring. This would be worth it in the end, if it meant he got to be there for Sara. And Neal liked to think that Peter, if he knew, would understand. 

But if all went well, he would never have to test that theory. 

***

One of the most aggravating aspects of all of this, Neal realized over the next few days, was being out of the loop and not really knowing how fast anything was going to move. Gordon was busy in London, but there was only so much he could do to rush something like this. He had to identify a target for them, had to figure out strategies and approaches, and had to do it all while giving Interpol just enough information to get interested. 

Sara, for her part, was being even less communicative than Gordon. It was hard to find a time to Skype that was good for both of them during the week, and her stubbornness about not wanting anyone at Sterling-Bosch to find out extended to not wanting to Skype during work hours. They exchanged emails and texts instead, which was how Neal found out on Wednesday that it was definitely cancer, albeit a pretty early form.

 _It’s much earlier than my mother’s was when she was diagnosed_ , Sara wrote in the email. _The doctor said my odds are very good these days. So DO NOT do anything stupid trying to get over here, Neal._

Neal, in his reply, was careful not to promise anything. He did ask when her surgery was scheduled. She was still waiting for her surgeon’s office to call her, Sara replied, but it would probably be sometime in the next couple of weeks. 

“Damn, Neal, I’m sorry,” Peter said the next day. The two of them were on a stakeout - rare these days, with Peter so tied up with work as ASAC. But Peter was being extra-solicitous this week, probably worried that Neal was going to cut the anklet and run off to London, and so instead of assigning Jones or Diana to go with him, he’d come himself. He’d even bought lunch. 

“Sara was pretty sure from the beginning. But of course we both hoped.”

“Does she have a plan yet?” Peter asked. “For treatment, I mean.”

Neal nodded. “Surgery and radiation. It’s early enough that they’re not going to do chemo, unless it progresses. But her odds are really good that it won’t.”

“That’s good,” Peter said. “I’m sure that’s a relief.”

“It is,” Neal said. He looked away from Peter and out toward the entrance to the suspect’s apartment. “I just wish I could be there. I know, I know,” he added, before Peter had the chance to say anything, “I know I can’t. I just - I wish I could. I don’t suppose anything’s come through from Interpol recently,” he added, making sure to inject just the right note of forced levity into his voice, so that Peter would think he had no real hope or expectation that something _had_. It was probably too early, in any case - it’d only been three days since he’d met with Gordon. 

But Peter hesitated. Neal glanced back at him. “What?” 

“Something did come through from Interpol,” Peter said. “Just this morning. I was going to ask you, before we started talking about other things - has Gordon Taylor contacted you again?”

“No,” Neal said. “I’d tell you if he had. Why?”

“He didn’t say _anything_ at all about the location of the job he wanted you to take?” Peter pressed. 

“No. I assumed it’d be here in New York, though. Why?”

“Because he’s in London,” Peter said, taking his eyes off the suspect’s place long enough to look at Neal. “And Interpol thinks he’s planning a job.”

“What?” Neal said, sitting up. “Peter, are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it just came through this morning, and because we don’t know anything yet. It might not even be the same job.”

“True,” Neal said, forcing himself to act as though that had dampened his excitement. “But if it was -”

“If it was,” Peter said, looking at him sharply, “that would be an awfully big coincidence.”

Neal frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I find it interesting, shall we say, that less than a week after you and I have a conversation about the _highly specific conditions_ that would be necessary for you to get permission to go to London before your sentence is up, those exact conditions look like they might arise.”

“So it might be possible,” Neal said. “If that’s the job he wants me to take, it might be possible.”

“It _might_ be,” Peter said. “Neal, did you hear everything else I said?”

Neal rolled his eyes. “Gift horses, Peter.”

Peter gave him a dry look. “With you, I’m extra-inclined to inspect the horse. You have to admit, Neal, that it’s quite a coincidence.”

“Coincidence,” Neal told him, “is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

“Thank you, _Mozzie_ ,” Peter replied. “Try again.”

Neal shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Peter.”

“I want you to say that you had nothing to do with any of this - that Gordon contacted you out of the blue and you’re not in any way involved in his decision to take a job in London.”

Neal sighed. “Seriously, Peter, it’s flattering, but I think you overestimate my skills.”

“Better than underestimating them,” Peter replied. “And you’re deflecting.”

“I’m not deflecting,” Neal said. “I just think it’s ridiculous - but fine, fine,” he added, when Peter looked unmoved. “I swear to you, Gordon didn’t say anything about where the job was, and I didn’t ask, because you don’t ask this early on. Besides, you’re right, it might not even be the same job. Guys like Gordon have their fingers in lots of pies.” None of that, Neal thought, was untrue; he just carefully didn’t confirm that it was Gordon who’d asked for the meet, and he hadn’t asked where the job was, because he’d already known where it would be.

Peter nodded. “Thank you.”

“But if it is the same job,” Neal said, “do you think there’s a chance?”

Peter shrugged. “There might be. It’s certainly more than I had to work with before. If Interpol decides they want you, I can probably swing it. The brass always likes it when Interpol owes us a favor.”

Neal nodded. They were both quiet for a few minutes, watching the apartment building, and when Peter spoke again it was to ask Neal what he thought their suspect’s next move would be. Neal quietly let himself relax, let his guard down a little. He wished he hadn’t enjoyed all that so much. He felt guilty about lying to Peter - well, _omitting_ to Peter - but he’d enjoyed that conversation all the same. He’d never tell Peter this, but he was sure that part of the reason he always kept one foot in the criminal world was that it let him match wits with Peter. 

The weekend came, and with it the chance to talk to Sara again. Neal had some flowers delivered to her on Saturday morning - a bit of a risk, with the mood she’d been in all week, but he knew what she liked. They Skyped that afternoon, and if she looked tired, then Neal knew better than to say so. She’d liked the flowers at least. 

“You know I’m not actually your fiancée, Caffrey,” she said, fingering the delicate petal of a lily. “No matter what you told Peter.”

“I can’t send you flowers?” Neal asked, propping his chin on his hand. 

She gave him a dry look, not unlike one of Peter’s. “You can. But that doesn’t make it any more real.”

“I know,” Neal said, subdued. “But it doesn’t make it less real either.”

“True,” Sara conceded. She was quiet a for a moment. “Elizabeth called me yesterday.” Neal raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to go on. “She tried to convince me to come back to New York for treatment.”

“We do have some pretty good doctors here,” Neal said, thinking about how much simpler his life would be if Sara came to New York for the duration. He could call the whole thing with Gordon off, and no one would be the wiser. 

“That wasn’t her argument, actually,” Sara said. She broke one of the petals off and held it in her hand. “She said it’d be easier if I was with people who cared about me.”

“She’s right, you know.” 

“I know, I just.” Sara stopped, closed her eyes, then ducked her head so that her hair fell across her face. But Neal saw it anyway, the way her face crumpled. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s just, this week. Pretending nothing was wrong, having to account for the time I spent at my doctor’s, trying to act like everything was fine.” She looked her, her eyes bright and red-rimmed. “I want to come home so badly, Neal.”

“Then come home,” Neal said, leaning forward. “Sara, please. Just come home.”

She shook her head. “Neal, if I don’t have this job, I have nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Neal objected. “You’d have me. You’d have as much of me as you wanted. And you’d have Peter and El, too. We’d all be there for you. And if Sterling-Bosch lets you go because you have cancer, then seriously, Sara, screw them. You can find another job.”

For a few seconds, Neal thought he had her. But then she bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, when he sighed. “I know - I know. And I want to. After this week, you have no idea how much I want to. I’m so tired of all of this, and I haven’t even been doing it very long. If I needed chemo - but I don’t. I told you before - I won’t let this change my life. I’m stronger than it is.”

“It’s not a matter of strength, Sara,” Neal said. “No one is saying you aren’t strong - you’re one of the strongest people I know. But there’s nothing wrong with letting other people share the load sometimes. Especially when they’re practically begging you to let them.”

She sighed. “I can’t.”

He nodded, looking down. “All right. Will you at least be better about calling? Or letting me call you?”

“Yeah, I will. I’m sorry about that, too. I just spent the whole week feeling like I was one kind word away from going to pieces. I knew that if I actually heard your voice, that’d be it.” She sat up, dashing the tears from her cheeks, visibly pulling herself together. Neal wished more than anything that he could be there with her. But even if he were, he wondered if she’d have let him be strong for her. It’d been a long time, he knew, since she’d let anyone play that role for her. Sara Ellis took care of herself, in all ways. 

“Oh God, wait, I forgot to mention,” she said, just as they were about to disconnect. “They gave me my surgery date.”

Neal blinked. “Sara, that’s the sort of thing you open with.”

“The flowers distracted me. It’s a week from Tuesday.”

Neal nodded. That _might_ be just right, he thought. If Gordon moved fast enough, he and Peter could be in London by then. “And what did you decide?”

“Lumpectomy,” she said. “I looked at the statistics and it’s not any better or worse. They’ll do a biopsy of my lymph nodes at the same time and see if it’s spread. And before you ask, I don’t need anyone there. It’s an outpatient procedure.”

“All the more reason, then. You’ll need someone at home afterward -”

“I really won’t,” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away from him, took a deep breath. “I’m going to be fine, Neal. It’s all going to be fine. And look, I’d better go. But we’ll talk soon.”

“Promise?” Neal said, searching her face. 

Her eyes softened, just a little. “Promise,” she said, and signed off. 

Neal spent the afternoon getting in touch with Mozzie to let him know about the new time frame, so that he could pass the news on to Gordon. A week and a half was a reasonable amount of time for something like this, but he didn’t want to go too early and have to find reasons to delay, or go too late and not be there for Sara when she needed him. By the time he went to bed that night, Neal didn’t quite know what to expect next, but he felt certain that something would happen and soon, probably Monday or Tuesday. Whether it would come from Gordon or Interpol, though, he couldn't say. 

Sunday and Monday crawled by with no developments from either Gordon or Interpol, as far as Neal could tell. But that evening he picked up his mail on his way upstairs and found a postcard. It was divided into four squares and each one showed a famous London museum: the National Gallery, the Tate Britain, the Tate Modern, and the Victoria and Albert. It wasn’t postmarked, so Gordon must have returned and dropped it off himself, or asked someone else to do it for him. On the back, in neat script, there was a place, a date, and a time given.

Neal could have waited until the next morning to show Peter - the meet wasn’t until Wednesday, after all - but he didn’t want to. He hailed a cab outside his apartment and headed out to Brooklyn. Rush hour traffic was starting to die down, so it didn’t take as long as it could have; Neal sat with the postcard in his hands, wondering which of the four places Gordon had identified as their target, if indeed it _was_ any of the four. Not that it mattered, particularly; he suspected the postcard was mostly meant to convince Peter that it really was the London job Gordon wanted him for. 

Elizabeth opened the door when he knocked. “Neal!” she said. “This is a surprise. Come in - is everything okay?”

Neal realized he probably looked a little frantic, so he forced himself to take a deep breath. “Yes, sorry. I just needed to see Peter about a case. Is he home?”

“He went out to pick up some take-out, actually. Have you eaten yet?”

“No, but I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding. There’ll be more than enough. Sit down and let me get you a glass of wine.”

“Thanks,” Neal said. He sat down on the sofa, placing the postcard picture side up on the coffee table in front of him. 

El came back with two glasses of red. She handed one of them to him, and sat down across from him in the armchair with her own. “So, Neal. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” Neal said, taking a steadying sip of wine. “I talked to Sara over the weekend. She mentioned that you’d called.”

“I did,” El said. “Did she tell you what we talked about?” Neal nodded. Elizabeth sighed. “I hope I didn’t upset her - I didn’t mean to, I just can’t imagine trying to go through something like this on my own without my family and friends around me. I thought maybe she just needed a push to think about coming back for treatment.”

Neal grimaced. “I’ve tried. She’s being pretty stubborn about the idea.”

“So I gathered,” El said. “Is it really about her job, do you think?”

Neal shook his head. He’d thought about this a lot in the last couple of days, while waiting for one of the pieces he’d put in play to move. “No. I think Sara’s never learned how to rely on people or how to ask for help.” He shrugged, a little sheepishly, and sipped his wine. “I know something about that.”

“Hmm,” Elizabeth said, failing to hide a smile behind her own wine glass. “No comment. But I’d hope that if you were in her situation, you’d know that you could ask for help. You know that you have people around you who would be there for you in a heartbeat, don’t you?”

“I do,” Neal said, giving her a small smile. “And I hope I would ask for help. And Sara _did_ ask, sort of. She called me when she was diagnosed. On the other hand, I don’t think she was thinking very clearly at the time, or else she might not have.”

The front door opened, and Neal heard Peter come in. “Hon?” he called.

“In here, hon,” El replied, and got up to take the takeaway bags from Peter as he came in. 

“Neal,” he said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I have something to show you,” Neal said, picking up the postcard and waving it around. 

“And I invited him to stay for dinner, since we ordered enough Thai food for a small army,” El added. “Let’s eat at the table like civilized people, all right?”

“Sure,” Peter said, and kissed her in passing as she took the takeaway bags into the kitchen. “So,” he said to Neal, “what’s so important it couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning?”

Neal handed him the postcard. Peter stared at it, then turned it over. “No postmark,” he said. “Taylor must have dropped this off at your place.”

“That was my thought, too. The buildings on the front, though -”

“- are all galleries or museums in London, yeah, I realize that,” Peter said. “So it is the London job he wants you for.”

“That would be the implication. Though I guess I won’t know for sure until we meet on Wednesday.”

Peter held the postcard in his hands, silently. El came out of the kitchen, carrying bowls of rice and curry. Neal went to help her set the table and bring out the rest of the food. Peter didn’t speak again until they were seated at the table, and Neal and El, at least, had started dishing up food. 

“This could work,” Peter said at last. “If he really wants you for a job in London, then I can probably sell this and get you over there.”

Neal paused, about to take a bite, and set his fork down. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here."

Peter didn’t answer. He did glance at El, though. “Oh, I forgot the wine,” she said, getting up. “And I’ll grab us some napkins, too, while I’m at it.” She headed back into the kitchen. 

“What, Peter?” Neal asked impatiently. 

Peter looked at him. “I haven’t gotten this far in my career without learning to listen to my gut, and when it comes to you, in particular, it’s almost never wrong.”

“It has been before,” Neal said, thinking of Adler and the warehouse. He couldn’t stop just the slightest hint of resentment from creeping into his voice. 

“It has been,” Peter agreed. “But not often. And right now, Neal, my gut is telling me that you had something to do with this.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Peter. I already told you -”

“I know what you told me,” Peter said. “And I know what you _didn’t_ tell me.”

Neal snapped his mouth shut. Peter was staring at him, hard, and it was one of those supremely uncomfortable moments when Neal was certain that Peter saw straight through him. “Peter, it’s a chance to get Gordon Taylor,” he said at last. “What else matters?”

Peter's mouth twisted into an exasperated grimace. “Your freedom, Neal. Your freedom matters. If this thing goes south and it comes out that you set it up -”

“But I didn’t,” Neal said. “I had nothing to do with setting up the job in London. I still don’t know what the target is. Peter, you said it yourself - your gut’s been wrong about me before. It’s not infallible and you know it. And even if we pretend - just for a moment - that you’re right and I did somehow manipulate this - and I must say, your faith in my abilities is flattering - then does it really change the objective from your point of view?”

Peter gave him a look, but then he sighed and Neal knew he’d won. “All right. I’ll go to my contact at Interpol with this in the morning, see what she says. But so help me, Neal, if something ends up getting stolen and I think you had something to do with it, prison will be the least of your problems. There will be a line of people ready to throttle you, starting with me.”

“You and Sara can flip a coin in that case,” Neal said, sitting back and relaxing. 

Peter let the matter drop for the rest of the evening, which actually turned out to be very enjoyable. By the time he caught a cab back into the city, Neal was a little tipsy and a lot tired. He tumbled into bed just before eleven and slept like the dead until six o’clock the next morning. 

He was in a good enough mood that he bought lattes for the whole team on his way in, which made Jones grin, Diana frown at him in suspicion even as she accepted hers, and Peter roll his eyes. 

“I haven’t talked to anyone at Interpol yet,” Peter said, before Neal could ask. “I will tell you when I do. In the meantime, I know you have things to be working on.”

He did, actually, though midway through the morning he found himself on the website of the National Gallery in London, browsing their catalogue and wondering if that was what Gordon wanted to hit. There were certainly enough intriguing possibilities: a Cézanne Neal had always liked, but also a Seurat and a Monet. But those were probably too flashy for what he and Neal had in mind. He switched over to looking at their upcoming exhibits. _Ah ha_ : a traveling exhibition of Viennese portraits from the turn of the twentieth century. That would be interesting, and traveling exhibitions were always somewhat vulnerable. On the other hand, the Tate Modern was scheduled to get an exhibition of Matisse’s paper cut outs - admittedly not Neal’s usual medium, but he was willing to stretch. The Victoria and Albert, he saw, had a lot of fashion exhibits coming up, and though Neal prided himself on his technical versatility, he didn’t think he could forge an eighteenth century wedding dress. 

“Ahem,” Peter said. 

Neal looked up and realized that Peter was standing right over his shoulder, arms crossed over his chest. “I was just -”

“I know what you were doing,” Peter said. “I thought you’d like to know that I talked to my contact at Interpol and she's - intrigued. Interested, even. If your meet with Gordon on Wednesday goes well, I think we’ll be on a plane to London by the weekend.”

“I’ll have to travel separately,” Neal told him. “I can’t get on a plane with you. Gordon would pay for my ticket as part of the job. First class, probably, and I can’t imagine that’s in the FBI’s budget.”

Peter sighed. “Fine. You’ll let me know your flight details and I’ll be right behind you. In coach.” 

“Is there something else?” Neal asked after a moment, when Peter didn’t go back to his own office. 

“Let’s get a coffee,” Peter said.

“Uh,” Neal said, glancing at the freshly brewed pot of FBI swill just across the room.

“Not that coffee. I’ll buy you a latte at that place you like down the street.”

“Well, that doesn’t bode well,” Neal muttered, but he got up to follow Peter out of the bullpen and toward the elevators. He waited until Peter had bought him his latte and then, in a very un-Peter-like move - went to sit at one of the tables. 

“Okay, what’s wrong?” Neal asked. 

“My contact at Interpol in the UK, Doyle - she’s a bit, well, twitchy about you. She’s happy to have your help with Taylor, but she’s not thrilled about letting you run around London.”

Neal suddenly had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Peter, they’re not - they _can’t_ make me sit in prison any time they’re not using me. Taylor would notice.”

“Hey, no, nothing like that,” Peter assured him. “But they want me to keep an extra close eye on you. Basically, any downtime we have, you either stay in the accommodations that Taylor provides you, or I have to be with you.”

“Okay,” Neal said, slowly. “That doesn’t sound terrible.”

Peter grimaced. “The thing is, Neal, my availability is likely to be limited. In addition to working this case, Bancroft has decided to make this trip a sort of inter-agency diplomatic mission. He’s set up meetings for me with all sorts of people at Interpol. Any time I don’t spend on the Gordon Taylor case, I’m probably going to spend in meetings.”

Peter didn’t look happy about this arrangement, but that was rather cold comfort, all things considered. “ _Peter_ ,” Neal said. “What about Sara? Her surgery is next Tuesday. I was really hoping to -”

“I know,” Peter said, holding his hands up. “And look, I will do everything I can to make sure you get to see her as much as possible. But as far as the higher ups go, we’re there for work. You need to resign yourself now to the idea that that is probably going to get in the way of you seeing Sara as much as you would otherwise.”

 _That_ was something Neal hadn’t considered. He looked away, afraid of what Peter might see on his face. Peter sipped his coffee and let him stew. 

“I do have one suggestion,” Peter said at last, after a long silence. Neal looked at him. “El wants to come. Her schedule next week is lighter than usual, and she loves London. And that way, if you’re not able to be with Sara the day of her surgery, at least she won’t be on her own. How does that sound?”

“Marginally less terrible,” Neal conceded grudgingly. “You couldn’t talk them into anything else?”

Peter shrugged. “Not from here. Maybe once they meet you, they’ll loosen up a bit. And no one will be tracking Sara’s movements,” he pointed out. “They have no way of knowing if she stays with you in that ridiculous luxury hotel room I’m sure Taylor will get you.”

“True,” Neal said, brightening. He wasn’t sure how Sara would feel about moving into a hotel for the duration, but it was something at least. 

They walked back to the office together. Neal was silent for most of the way, and Peter didn't push him to talk. Right before they went inside, Neal stopped him. “Thank you,” he said. Peter looked at him, eyebrows raised. “I know setting all of this up is a lot of work.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” Peter said. “I’m doing it to catch Gordon Taylor.” It was Neal’s turn to raise his eyebrows then, and Peter looked away and shrugged. “Well, maybe I am doing it a little bit for you. And for Sara, too. You were right when you said that if it was Elizabeth, I’d move heaven and Earth to get to her.”

“Hey, I haven’t moved anything,” Neal protested. “Heaven and Earth just happened to move when and where I needed them to.”

“Right, of course,” Peter said, just a touch of skepticism in his voice. “Well, regardless. I truly can’t imagine what this is like for her, but I tried to imagine what it must be like for you. This is the least I can do.”

“If it’s the least you can do, it’s still a lot,” Neal said. “So, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Peter said, then shook his head, rolling his eyes - at himself or Neal, Neal didn’t know. “And I mean that - don’t mention it.”

***

For once, Neal’s meet with Gordon wasn’t at a pool hall; instead, he’d asked to meet at the restaurant at the Central Park boathouse. It was an almost balmy early spring day, but everything was still shut up for winter; the patio was heated, but even so, they were the only guests willing to brave the elements. 

“So,” Gordon said, once they were seated and had both ordered coffee. “How are things on your end?”

“They’re going well,” Neal said. “Thanks for setting things up with Interpol. They want me, and Peter seems to be onboard.”

Gordon raised an eyebrow. “He’s not at all suspicious?”

“Oh, he’s suspicious all right,” Neal said. “‘Suspicious’ is Peter Burke’s natural state. But I think he’s willing to overlook it, as long as we don’t cross certain boundaries. Speaking of which, what’s our target?”

“Targets,” Gordon corrected him. “How do you feel about _fin de siècle_ Viennese portraits? The National Gallery is receiving a traveling exhibition next week, and there is a Klimt that I think we should make our ostensible target. You’re probably familiar with it - _Portrait of a Lady in Black_? You’d need to make a passable forgery.”

“Not a problem.” He’d seen the painting on the museum’s website the day before; copying it would be fun. “But you said that’s the _ostensible_ target.”

Gordon didn’t answer immediately, as the waiter returned with their coffee. Neal added cream to his; Gordon took his black. “That’s the target I want the FBI and Interpol to think we’re going to hit,” Gordon said once the waiter had left again. “But our real target is another painting, currently hanging in the National Gallery for the first time in fifteen years.” He took a folded-over sheet of paper out of his pocket and passed it to Neal across the table. It was a high quality print-out of a painting of a Viennese street scene. Neal had never seen it before; truthfully, he probably would have passed right by it if he’d seen it in a gallery, though there was something intriguing about the quality of the light. Below the painting were the title and the artist’s name and dates: _Herrengasse in the Evening_ , Georg Ziegler (1900-1943).

“I don’t expect you to know it,” Gordon said. “It’s a minor work by a minor Austrian artist. Not worth very much at all.”

Neal looked up, frowning. “Then why steal it?”

Gordon gave him a strange half-smile. “Sentiment. Georg Ziegler was my grandfather, and as far as I know, that’s the only one of his paintings that survived the Second World War. Family history gets spotty around that time, but the short version is this: my grandparents were Viennese Jews. My grandfather was an artist, though he was never terribly successful. When Hitler annexed Austria, they tried to emigrate and couldn’t. But they were able to get my father on a _Kindertransport_ to England just before the war broke out. You can fill in the rest, I’m sure.”

Neal could, unfortunately, based on Ziegler’s dates. “I’m sorry.”

Gordon shrugged. “It was a long time ago. My father was very close to the English couple who raised him - he even took their name eventually. That’s who I knew as my grandparents. But my father never stopped looking for his father’s work, hoping he might find at least one of his paintings. He was never able to. But _I_ was.”

"I see. But if it was important to you to get the painting back, why didn’t you do it before now?”

Gordon shrugged. “The opportunity wasn’t there. I didn’t realize until recently that the painting was on display - it’s been in storage ever since the gallery purchased it, years ago. Before then, it was in a private collection in Vienna, and before that - well, it’s hard to say for sure. My father was too young to know if the painting was ever sold, or if it was looted directly from their home after my grandparents were deported. An awful lot of art went missing in the 1940s, as I know you, personally, are well aware.”

The emphasis in Gordon’s voice was unmistakable, and so was the faint note of reproach. Neal sipped his coffee and hoping he wasn’t actually flushing with embarrassment. “It was all from Russian museums, Mozzie said.”

“Yes,” Gordon said, sipping at his own coffee. “Mozzie said. And how, exactly, would Mozzie have known that? It’s not out of the realm of possibility that buried amidst the Rembrandts and the Vermeers there were other items - items of almost no value whatsoever except to the people they were taken from. Not that most of those people were alive after everything was said and done to reclaim them, if they could even be found.”

Neal didn’t know what to say. “I take your point,” he said at last.

“Good,” Gordon said, sitting back in his chair. “I’d hoped you would. Because the stars have finally aligned, Neal. If everything goes well, you’ll get what you want - to see your fiancée - and I’ll get what I want - the painting. And if we play our cards right, even the FBI and Interpol will get half of what they want - to prevent _Portrait of a Lady in Black_ from being stolen. Though they won’t, of course, get me. I am trusting, Neal, that you don’t intend to sell me out in this.”

“No, of course not,” Neal said. “I’m going to owe you a huge favor, Gordon.”

Gordon shook his head. “If you help me get my grandfather’s painting, then I think we can consider ourselves even. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, we do,” Neal said, and reached across the table to shake Gordon’s hand. 

“Good,” Gordon said. “Is Friday soon enough for you to leave? You’ll need to make two forgeries, one for each painting, though of course your FBI handler can’t know about the second one.”

“Friday is soon enough. Mozzie will get you a copy of the passport I’ll be using. Send the information via him.”

“I will. Until London, then.”

“Until London,” Neal said. He watched Gordon leave, and then waved the waiter down to pay for their coffees. 

Peter was pleased with the information Neal came back with. It seemed that _Portrait of a Lady in Black_ had been on Interpol’s short list of possible targets from the moment they’d heard Gordon was in town. Peter gave him his new passport - Nathan Greer was his alias, apparently - and let him go to start researching for the forgery, after making him promise to tell him the moment Gordon got back in touch with his flight information. 

That information came through that evening via Mozzie: Neal would be leaving Friday evening on a red-eye, getting into London early on Saturday morning. Gordon had booked him into a luxury suite in a downtown London hotel within walking distance of the National Gallery. 

The only thing left to do was to tell Sara. Neal liked to think she’d be pleased, but he knew her well enough to expect a mixed reaction. 

“What?” she said blankly, when he Skyped her to tell her the news. 

“I’m coming to London,” Neal repeated. “We have a case, and Interpol asked for me specifically. I get in Saturday morning.”

“I don’t understand,” Sara said. “Peter said there wasn’t any way.”

Neal shrugged. “Well, there was. There is. A case came up. Someone wants to rob the National Gallery and they want me to help.”

“I . . . see,” she said, slowly, eyeing him. “And that just happened to be the case? Right when you needed it to be? Come on, Caffrey. Is anyone buying this?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Neal said innocently. “You and Peter both are so suspicious! As though I could somehow manipulate both the FBI and Interpol into doing exactly what I want them to.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Yes. Yes, you could do that. And I think you did do that. I swear to God, Neal, if you end up back in prison -”

“- you’ll break off our engagement?” Neal finished with a grin. 

She laughed, though it sounded a little reluctant. “Yes. I will break off our engagement.” She shook her head. “But I am glad. I don’t know how you arranged it, but I’m glad you’re going to be here next week.”

“And Peter,” Neal said. “And Elizabeth, too, actually.”

Sara blinked again. “What?”

Neal grimaced. “Interpol’s a little twitchy about me. I’m basically confined to my hotel room unless Peter’s with me, and I guess Peter’s going to be in a lot of meetings while we’re over there. So I might not be able to be at the hospital when you have your surgery. Elizabeth thought she might come and keep you company when I can’t. If that’s all right.”

“That’s . . .” Sara stopped and bit her lip, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Yes, that’s fine,” she said at last, her voice a little rough. “I guess you guys are really determined, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, we are,” Neal said, softly. “Get used to it, Ellis.”

She managed a smile. “I’ll try. I should get some sleep tonight, but I guess I’ll see you soon. You get in Saturday morning, you said? Can I meet you at the airport?”

Neal shook his head. “Peter will be on the same flight, and I’m guessing we’ll be meeting with Interpol all afternoon. But I’ll be in touch. Let’s count on dinner Saturday night? It’ll have to be room service, since I can’t really go anywhere.”

“Room service on Saturday night sounds great. I’ll see you then.” Sara signed off. 

Thursday and Friday were full of last minute preparations. Neal spent most of his work hours prepping for the forgeries he’d have to do once he was in London. Transporting works in progress without damaging them was always tricky, but he did his research and gave Peter a list to give to Agent Doyle in London. Supplies would be waiting for him in Nathan Greer’s hotel suite when he got there, so at least some of the hours Neal was inevitably going to spend twiddling his thumbs while Peter was in meetings would be put to good use. 

El would be flying in early next week, Peter told Neal on Friday. She had a couple of events this weekend and some things to wrap up on Monday, but she’d join them Tuesday morning. 

“Any chance Interpol might consider her an appropriate chaperone?” Neal asked, without much hope. 

“Unlikely,” Peter said. “But you never know. If you’re on your best behavior for a few days, maybe by then I can convince them to give you a bit of a longer leash. No promises,” he added, when Neal made the mistake of brightening. “And I remind you that this is a bed of your own making. If you hadn’t stolen things in Europe, Europe wouldn’t be quite so suspicious.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Neal said with a sigh. “What time should we leave for the airport?” They’d both brought their bags with them, so as to cut down on time spent driving around in rush hour Manhattan traffic.

“No later than five,” Peter said. “More like four-thirty if I can manage it.” He nodded toward a stack of paperwork on his desk and grimaced. “I think Bancroft is trying to drown me in forms before we leave.”

“Well, let me know if you need to me come dig you out."

“I will. Now go - at least _pretend_ to do some work, all right?”

Neal tried, he really did, but he’d done most of what he could do ahead of time, and cold cases held absolutely no interest for him. At two o’clock, Jones took pity on him and dragged him out for a cup of coffee, which helped. But by four-thirty, when he saw Peter get up and put on his suit jacket, Neal was more than ready to go. He tried not to grin too broadly as he packed up, shutting down his computer and putting the materials related to the case in his bag. 

“You guys heading out?” Diana asked.

“Yup,” Neal said. 

“Good luck,” she said. “Try not to get arrested.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s a _sting_. I’m not going to be the one getting arrested.” He hoped. 

“Sure, Caffrey,” Jones said. “Have fun.”

“But not too much fun,” Diana added.

Peter had a few last minute instructions for Jones and Diana. Neal went and punched the button for the elevator, which could take forever this time of day, and tried not to bounce in excitement. Peter joined him just as the doors opened. “Well,” Peter said to him as they got inside, "you ready for this?”

“You better believe it,” Neal said. This time, he didn’t bother suppressing his grin.


	2. Chapter 2

Early on Saturday morning, London was exactly how Neal remembered it - gray, damp, and _glorious_. He’d slept reasonably well on the plane, but Peter looked grumpy and rumpled enough that Neal suspected that hadn’t been the case for him. Neal kept his mouth shut about the virtues of flying business class. Mouthing off wouldn’t win him any points with Peter in this mood. 

The sole advantage of Peter not having slept well was that he didn’t argue when Neal suggested they take a cab instead of struggling with their luggage on the Tube. Neal did his best to hide his excitement as suburbs gave way to London’s distinctive sprawl, but aside from his brief adventure on Cape Verde, it had been years now since Neal had been anywhere that wasn’t New York or Sing Sing. He hadn’t itched as much as he’d thought he would on his radius, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t glad to be somewhere else - somewhere with different buildings, different fashion, different food, different _people_. 

Interpol’s offices were in downtown London. They were met there by Agent Frances Doyle, who greeted them with Neal’s anklet already in hand. Within a minute or two of meeting her, Neal decided that Agent Doyle probably wasn’t going to be easily charmed. A mild attempt at flirtation was rebuffed, with a sharp glance that told him clearly that she had his number, thank you very much. She put his anklet on herself and seemed just a little too pleased about it. Neal wondered if she’d worked his case personally for Interpol.

Sitting through Doyle’s briefing meeting took Neal back to his early days with Peter, when his contributions to cases were always taken with at least a grain or two of suspicious salt. “Are you certain that it’s _Portrait of a Lady in Black_ that he’s after?” Doyle asked Neal.

It was probably the third time she’d asked it since they’d arrived. Neal suppressed a sigh. “That’s what he said. He could change it on me, but it’d be bad form to do it once I start the forgery.”

“And no one else is involved?” Doyle pressed, watching him carefully.

“It’s a two man job,” Neal said, though he suspected that Gordon had enlisted help from other quarters. “The fewer people involved, the better. Less likely someone will rat you out, and the take gets divided fewer ways.”

Doyle sat back, appearing at least somewhat mollified. Apparently greed and mutual suspicion were motives that made sense to her. “Well, we don’t want to keep you from getting to work. Has Agent Burke told you about your . . . let’s call them geographic restrictions.”

“Yes,” Neal said. “But I was wondering if it might be possible for some flexibility - it’s just that Peter’s going to be in meetings a lot, and I might need to leave the hotel to get supplies for the forgery.”

Doyle didn’t give even the slightest hint that she was moved to consider his request. “If you need anything, you’ll contact my office, and I will send someone out. You may also move about within the hotel. But if you leave the premises, your anklet will activate and we will know. In that case, we might be forced to ask questions about certain items of value that went missing during periods you were known to be in Europe. I don’t think you want us doing that.”

“Probably not,” Neal agreed.

“Good. Agent Burke, are you free this afternoon to take Mr. Caffrey to the hotel? I understand that you’re staying in the same place.”

“Yes, albeit several floors below. And it was _still_ over budget,” Peter added to Neal, as though it was Neal’s fault where Gordon had booked him. “Come on, I need some food. We’re probably going to stop off for lunch somewhere,” he said to Doyle. “Will that be a problem?”

“No. Just call this number when you want to activate and de-activate the anklet.” She handed him a card. Peter glanced at it and put it in his wallet. 

Neal had the sense of being let out of school early as they caught the Tube toward the neighborhood where their hotel was located, just off Trafalgar Square, and even Peter seemed to perk up. Neal let Peter pick the lunch place; he gravitated immediately toward a touristy-looking pub, but Neal decided not to argue. Neither of them had had anything but coffee since the plane, and he suspected that a lot of Peter’s mood was due to hunger. 

The restaurant’s menu was standard pub fare. Neal ordered fish and chips, because why not, and Peter got a burger with fries and glared at Neal until he promised not to tell El. They both ordered pints of beer and took them to sit at a table in the window. 

“You know,” Neal said, after Peter had drained part of his pint, “it’s a lot better for jet-lag to walk around outside in the sun. Staying indoors just messes up your circadian rhythm and makes it worse.”

Peter gave him a look. “Don’t you have a forgery to start?”

He had two, as a matter of fact. Neal shrugged. “I think I might need to see the real thing in person. The National Gallery is just on the other side of the square. The walk would be good for us. Then we can go back to the hotel.”

“All right,” Peter said, with some reluctance. “I guess that wouldn’t hurt.” 

He looked like he was going to say something else, but he paused while the bartender brought their food over, and for a few minutes no one said anything. The place had looked like a tourist trap, but the food was decent, and Neal was starving.

At last they both slowed. Peter swallowed his last bite of burger, and said, “So, what are your plans to see Sara? I’d have thought she’d be your first stop.”

“We made plans for tonight. I thought it’d take a lot longer at Interpol than it did.”

“You could see if she want to join us at the museum. She likes that sort of thing, doesn’t she?”

“She does,” Neal said, slowly. Part of him wanted the first time he saw her to be in private. But she would enjoy seeing the museum and hearing about the sting they were setting up. And she could probably use the distraction. “I’ll text her and see,” he said at last, pulling out his phone.

She wrote back that she’d be happy to join them at the museum, though it would take her a few minutes to get there. He and Peter finished their lunch and their pints, and by the time they left the pub, Peter was in a much better mood. It’d been gray all morning, but the sun actually came out as they crossed the street and headed north toward the museum. They took their time, and Neal realized after a moment or two that Peter was looking around avidly, taking things in, almost as though -

“Peter, you’ve been to London before, haven’t you?” Neal asked as they waited to cross at a light. He’d assumed he had been. Elizabeth was well-traveled, and even if Peter wasn’t the type to enjoy expensive vacations, Neal had been sure he’d have had the chance to cross the pond at least once. 

Peter looked almost embarrassed. “Not really.”

Neal stared at him. “Seriously?”

Peter shrugged. “I’ve been just a little busy, you know, chasing criminals.”

“Yeah, but it’s _London_. Have you been to Europe at all? Tell me you’ve been to Paris at least.”

“Not so much,” he admitted. 

“Peter! I can’t believe Elizabeth hasn’t dragged you to Europe yet!”

Peter grimaced. “We were supposed to go a few years ago. El had the trip all planned out, and we’d bought our tickets and booked our hotels and everything.”

“So what happened?” Neal asked. 

“I got a lead on a hotshot young forger I was calling James Bonds. I thought that if I didn’t move on it then, I probably wouldn’t have the chance to get him again for a while. So we canceled.”

Neal frowned. “Is that when you caught me?”

“No, as a matter of fact. And don’t think I didn’t hear about that from Elizabeth.” 

Neal felt - well, he couldn’t feel guilty about Peter not having caught him at that point, but he did feel sort of guilty about having ruined their vacation. “I’m sorry.”

Peter gave him a strange look. “It was a while ago, Neal. Besides, I’m here now, and El will join us next week, so I guess we’re finally getting our trip after all. Except for the part where I’m on business and going to be in meetings all the time.”

“Yeah, except for that,” Neal said dryly.

They ended up waiting for Sara on the steps of the National Gallery. The sun had gone behind a cloud again, but it was warmer than Neal had expected for April, and it was pleasant to sit outside in their jackets. Even so, Neal found himself unaccountably nervous, answering Peter’s attempts at conversations with monosyllables while trying to keep an eye out for Sara. He wasn’t sure which direction she’d be coming from, but in the end he spotted her as she crossed the street toward them.

She was wearing a bright blue coat, and her head was bare, red hair glinting in the sun that had decided to peek out again. Neal had told himself he’d play it cool, but she saw him and smiled, her step quickening, and he shot to his feet. He didn’t run, but he did cut through the crowd with ruthless efficiency to meet her. He pulled her into his arms before she had the chance to hesitate and held her tight - tighter than he ever had in New York, before she’d flown away from him. “Hey, Repo,” he said, not bothering to hide the emotion in his voice. 

“Hey, Caffrey,” she said, quietly, resting her head on his shoulder. She pulled away, just far enough, and Neal kissed her, threading his fingers through the fine strands of her hair. He didn’t go in for the kiss he really wanted, conscious as he was of Peter standing not far away, but as a promise for the future went, he thought it was pretty good. 

“I can’t believe you pulled this off,” she murmured, when he finally let her go. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he replied, innocently, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they turned to face Peter. 

“Hi, Sara,” Peter said, only a little awkwardly.

“Hi, Peter. It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m all right, thanks. All things considered. Yourself?”

“I’m doing well.” Peter nodded toward the museum. “Shall we?”

“Yes, let’s,” Sara said. She pulled away a little, but she let Neal keep her hand firmly in his as they mounted the steps to the museum. 

It was early on a Saturday afternoon and the museum was, predictably, packed. Tourists and locals, families and older couples, students - everyone was out in force. Peter used his badge and some paperwork he had from Interpol to get them inside without having to fight the crowd at the main entrance. Neal knew he’d try and usher them through, but Neal took his time, looking at paintings he hadn’t seen in person in ten years, talking about them quietly with Sara while Peter tapped his foot in the background. 

It was in the third gallery that he saw it: _Herrengasse in the Evening_. He couldn’t linger long in front of it, but he did stop and look, trying to get a sense of the painting’s texture. Up close, it wasn’t very remarkable; he could understand why it’d been in storage for fifteen years. But there was a liveliness to it that he liked. 

The frame was distinctive. If they were going to swap the paintings out, they’d either have to find a matching one or else get the original undamaged out of the frame and replace it with the forgery, which would take longer. 

“Pretty,” Sara remarked about it, noncommittally. “But I think we’d better move on before Peter has a stroke.”

Neal glanced over his shoulder. Peter was, indeed, looking very impatient, and as much as Neal enjoyed messing with him, it was probably in his best interest to stay on his good side.

 _Portrait of a Lady in Black_ was in a separate exhibition hall with all of the other turn-of-the-century Viennese portraits in the traveling exhibit. It was displayed prominently, and Neal was struck again by the strange shape of it - over six feet tall, but less than three feet wide. He stood for a long time in front of it, ignoring the comings and goings of people around him - long enough that Sara got bored and wandered off, and the docent next to the painting started eyeing him suspiciously.

“What exactly are you looking at?” Peter asked. 

“Brushstrokes,” Neal said, absently. “You can’t get anything about brushstrokes from a picture.” He leaned forward, bending over the roped-off area in front of the painting, until the docent, an attractive older woman with a sharp gaze, cleared her throat pointedly. He backed off then, smiled at her, and turned to Peter. “I have what I need.”

“Good,” Peter said. His hand landed heavily on Neal’s shoulder and steered him toward the exit. “Is there anything else you need here?”

“They have a really nice Cézanne,” Neal said, plaintively. “It’s just in the next hall.”

“Another time,” Peter said, firmly. “Come on, Neal. We need to get to the hotel - you need to start painting, and I still haven’t called El to let her know we got here okay.”

Neal sighed heavily and gave in. He’d have at least one more opportunity to see the Cézanne before the trip was over, after all.

The hotel suite Gordon had booked him was impressive. There was a bedroom with a king-sized bed and a balcony that overlooked the square, and a living room that was cozy but well furnished. Peter rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything; once he’d made sure that Neal had what he needed to get started on the forgery, he left for his own room, presumably to call El. Fortunately he didn’t look around the suite much, or he might have seen the second canvas Gordon had hidden away in one of the closets. The paints would do for both, but _Herrengasse in the Evening_ was less than half the size of _Portrait of a Lady in Black_. 

But that could wait just a little longer. Neal grabbed Sara around the waist and tumbled with her onto the bed. He kissed her as he hadn’t been able to kiss her earlier, until they were both breathless with it. If other things had been difficult between them in the past, Neal thought, sex had never been one of them. A year and a half separation hadn’t changed that at all. 

She fell asleep afterward. That wasn’t like her, but Neal suspected she hadn’t been sleeping well since the diagnosis. He gave himself fifteen minutes to lie with her in his arms; this, after all, was what he’d worked so hard for. But his work wasn’t over yet, and eventually he had to slide out of bed. He tucked the covers around her and left her sleeping. 

This was going to be tricky, Neal realized. He had to make progress on the forgery of the Klimt, but he also had to have the Ziegler ready to go when it was needed, and he had to do it without anyone knowing. If Sara stayed with him, and he hoped she would, he’d have to do it behind her back, while she was at work. He thought she’d see that even if what they were doing was illegal, it wasn’t precisely _unethical_ ; Sara’s understanding of ethics, after all, was a bit more encompassing of gray areas than Peter’s. But if things went south, he didn’t want her to know more than she had to.

Neal set the easel up by the windows. He started with the Klimt, both because Peter was going to want to see progress when he returned and because it was bigger and therefore going to take longer. The room had excellent light, but then, Gordon would have thought of that when he booked it. 

It didn’t take long for Neal to fall into the flow, losing track of everything except the work itself. He didn’t look up again until he started to lose the light, several hours later. 

That was when he realized he wasn’t alone. Gordon Taylor was sitting on the sofa, watching him. 

Neal swore and jumped. “Damn it,” he hissed. “When did you get here?”

Gordon checked his watch. “About five minutes ago. You seemed very absorbed, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Neal glanced toward the other room. “Sara -”

“Left fifteen minutes ago to get coffee with your FBI handler,” Gordon finished. 

Neal raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you watching me, Gordon?”

Gordon shrugged, then came to stand in front of the painting. Neal, wiping his hands on a rag, watched him study it closely. “You do such good work, Neal,” Gordon said at last. “It’s a shame you intend to leave us.” He turned away from the painting. “So, you met a friend of mine today.”

“I did?” Neal said blankly. 

“Yes. She said you took your time in front of the Klimt portrait.”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “The docent.” Gordon nodded. “Is she our inside man?”

“To a degree,” Gordon said. “She’s the one who told me that _Herrengasse in the Evening_ was hanging in the gallery, and she has some inside knowledge of the security system that she’s willing to share. But she won’t jeopardize her position with the gallery for our sake, and I wouldn’t want her to.”

“Got it. So what’s the plan?”

“A classic bait and switch. I will go after the Klimt, while you take care of the Ziegler.”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “And if they catch you?”

“Oh, I fully intend for them to catch me,” Gordon said, with a smile that held just a hint of teeth. “But not inside the museum, and there’s nothing illegal about carrying a copy of a painting.”

“A copy,” Neal pointed out. “Not a forgery.”

Gordon nodded. “I’ll need you to sign the painting. Subtly, of course, but I know you can do that.”

“I can,” Neal said, slowly, “but if I sign the painting and you get caught with it, Peter’s going to know we were conning him, and my ass is going to be in the fire.”

“So tell him you’re signing it. To, I don’t know, avoid an international incident and make sure there are no mistakes, what have you.” He waved his hand carelessly. “You’re clever, and you know Agent Burke better than anyone. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Neal nodded, frowning. That might work. “The Ziegler’s frame is unusual,” he said after a moment. “If we’re going to switch the two, we need to think about that.”

Gordon nodded. “I know. Leave that to me. You just worry about the paintings. Do you need anything else for the forgeries? I realize that your movements are somewhat restricted at the moment.”

“I’m all right for now. I’ll let you know if that changes. But if Peter and Sara just went out for coffee -”

“Yes, I’d best be going. But I’ll be in touch via text once plans start to fall into place. Here.” He flipped Neal a small, cheap burner phone. “I’m the only number in there. Don’t show your handler.” He shook Neal’s hand and departed. 

Neal tucked the phone into a hidden compartment in the bottom of his suitcase - _thank you, Mozzie_ \- then scrubbed the paint smudges off his hands and changed out of the tank top and loose khakis he’d been painting in. By the time Sara and Peter returned, less than ten minutes later, he looked at least somewhat presentable. 

“Hey,” he said, emerging from the bedroom when he heard Peter let himself in with the extra keycard. “Where’d you guys go?”

“Around the corner for some coffee,” Peter said. 

“We did tell you,” Sara added, sounding amused. 

Neal blinked. “You did?”

“Yup,” Peter said. “I said, ‘Neal, we’re going for coffee. You want anything?’ You said, ‘Okay.’”

“Huh,” Neal said, bemused. “Did you bring me anything?”

“No, but you can have some of mine,” Peter said. “I want enough caffeine to get me through the evening, but not so much I can’t sleep.” He passed Neal his coffee cup on his way to the window to look at the painting. He gave a low whistle. “Definitely a nice start.”

“Thanks,” Neal said, pleased despite himself. He slipped an arm around Sara, pulling her close, and took a sip from Peter’s coffee. Peter took his coffee black, so it was much more bitter than Neal preferred. But Peter wasn’t the only one starting to drag. Neal could definitely use the pick-me-up. 

“Are we doing dinner in or out?” Neal asked, when Peter finally turned away from the painting. He hadn’t counted on Peter as a third wheel when he’d promised Sara room service, but since it was down to Peter that he was able to come at all, he wasn’t going to say anything. 

Fortunately, Peter seemed to understand. “Actually, I’m supposed to meet Agent Doyle for dinner,so I’ll leave you two on your own. I’ll see you tomorrow, though. And, ah, Neal -”

“I know - don’t leave the hotel,” Neal said, with put-upon weariness.

“Right,” Peter said, with a smile that somehow managed to be both exasperated and apologetic. “Good night, Sara.”

“Good night, Peter,” Sara said, smiling. 

“So,” Neal said, once Peter had gone. Sara turned in his arms, locking her hands together behind his head. “In or out? Or, well, here or in the restaurant downstairs?”

“In,” Sara said, decisively. “You promised me room service.”

“All right, then,” Neal said, and went to fetch the menu. 

The evening was brisk but pleasant, so they had a picnic of sorts out on the balcony. Neal would have liked to take Sara out for a fancy dinner, to give her a _real_ date, but she didn’t seem to care much that he couldn’t. “I go out to fancy dinners with clients all the time,” Sara said, when Neal said something to that effect. “Going out to eat just feels like work now. I’d rather be here.”

Neal was glad to hear it, but there was something in the way she said it, a sort of weariness, that made him sad for her. But he knew she wouldn’t welcome any sympathy, so he just drew her feet into his lap and pressed his thumbs to the balls of her feet, where he knew they were often sore after a day in the heels she loved. 

After dinner, they took advantage of the enormous Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, and then Neal ordered champagne and strawberries from room service. They ate them lounging on the bed in hotel robes. The strawberries were out of season and a little tart, but the champagne was delicious.

Jet lag was starting to get to Neal and he was in danger of nodding off when Sara sighed. “You’re too good at this, you know,” she said, depositing a strawberry top back in the room service bowl. “You make it look so easy to live in the clouds.”

Neal turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “These days it’s more like I visit the clouds.”

She was quiet for a moment. Her hair, still damp from their bath and smelling of the hotel shampoo, tickled his face. “But even visits to the clouds come at a price, don’t they,” she said at last, voice very subdued. “I can’t help wondering what price you paid for this, Neal.”

“What makes you think I paid a price at all?” 

“Peter thinks you did.” She rolled over to tuck herself closer to him. “He tried not to interrogate me, but he’s worried. You’re so close to being done with your sentence, and neither of us wants you to throw all that away now.” She propped herself up on her elbow. “So tell me,” she said, quietly. “How much of a con are you running?”

He reached up and twined a strand of her damp hair around his finger. “Just enough to be here with you.” 

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re going to get,” he replied, “because I don’t think you really want to know. And neither does Peter, if he’s honest with himself.”

“Plausible deniability.”

“It’s pretty much the motto of my relationship with him.”

Sara frowned. “I don’t want it to be the motto of our relationship. If we’re going to have a relationship at all, then I want this to be the last time you tell me not to ask any questions. From now on, if you think you can’t tell me, then you don’t do whatever it is you’re about to do. Are we clear?”

“You’re asking a lot.” She looked at him, unwavering, and he sighed. “All right. This is the last time. I promise.”

“Thank you,” she said, and kissed him. “And thank you,” she added, tucked her head into the crook of his neck, “for doing whatever it is you did to be here with me. I don’t approve of it, mind you, but I do appreciate it. If that makes any sense.”

Neal didn’t know what to say to that. _You’re welcome_ was right out, and _my pleasure_ wasn’t quite right either. Instead he held her closer and closed his eyes. 

***

Sunday felt strangely domestic. He and Sara woke to rain in the morning and lazed in bed until Peter texted to let them know he was on his way up. Neal spent the remainder of the morning painting, while Sara and Peter both worked in the living room. By the afternoon, _Portrait of a Lady in Black_ had started to take shape on the canvas, and the rain had finally let up. Neal convinced Peter that it was time for all of them to get out for a bit. They bought sandwiches and ate them in a nearby park. Peter wandered off once they were done eating to some touristy shops, ostensibly to look for something for El, but in truth probably to give him and Sara some time alone. 

“I don’t say this very often,” Sara said, contemplatively, “but I wish I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow.”

Neal squeezed her hand. “What did you tell them about Tuesday?”

“As little as possible. I took some vacation time and cleared my schedule for the rest of the week, said I’d work a little remotely but not to expect me in. It raised a few eyebrows but it isn’t like I don’t have the time accrued.” She sighed. “I need to go back to my apartment, though. I didn’t bring clothes for longer than just overnight.”

Neal nodded. “But you’re coming back, aren’t you? I was hoping you’d stay with me at the hotel, since I can’t come to your place without Peter.”

She smiled at him. “Sure I won’t cramp your style?”

“Very sure.”

Sara looked away for a moment. Neal let her think. “All right,” she finally said. “For tonight and tomorrow night at least. I don’t know about after my surgery - it’s bad enough recovering at home, I’m not sure I’d like it in a hotel.”

“Ah, but your apartment doesn’t come with your very own willing and able servant.” 

She smiled. “I’ll think about it.”

Sara left soon after they caught up with Peter, hailing a cab to take her back to her apartment. Peter and Neal walked back to the hotel. Neal dragged his feet a little; not that he wasn’t looking forward to working on the painting some more, and maybe even getting started on _Herrengasse_ , but he’d have rather spent another hour or two out in the city, enjoying the sights and sounds of a place that was not, in any way, Manhattan. 

“I find it odd that Gordon hasn’t contacted you yet,” Peter said as they took the elevator up. “No word at all on when he intends you two to strike?”

“Nope,” Neal said. “Or on what the exact plan is going to be. I’ll let you know when he does.”

The elevator came to a stop on Peter’s floor. He gave Neal a long glance before exiting. “See that you do.”

In the suite by himself for nearly the first time since he’d arrived, Neal immediately pulled out his phone. _I’m alone,_ he texted Gordon. _And I’m getting really curious about details and timing._

He’d changed back into his painting clothes and was about to get started again when there was a knock at the door. “Hope I’m not interrupting the artistic process,” Gordon said when Neal answered. 

“Not at all,” Neal said. “Come on in.”

Gordon followed him in. Neal raided the mini-bar and poured them both a finger of Scotch in expensive, heavy-bottomed tumblers with the hotel’s name engraved into them. “Peter’s starting to want to know things,” Neal said, bringing Gordon’s over to him. “He’s suspicious that you haven’t tried to contact me yet.”

Gordon shrugged. “So tell him I contacted you this evening.” He sat down on the sofa and spread his arm across the back, expansive. He sipped his Scotch and sighed, appreciatively. “So, Neal. Tell me. How would you plan a heist like this?”

Neal raised an eyebrow, but then he shrugged, leaning back in the armchair across from Gordon. “It would depend on my resources. We need to disable the security system, including the cameras, and get both paintings inside, and we need to do it in a way that calls maximum attention to the Klimt and zero attention to the Ziegler.”

Gordon nodded. “The security system and the cameras won’t be a problem. I have a couple nifty pieces of tech, courtesy of Mozzie, that will take care of those. Getting the Klimt forgery inside in its frame would be tricky, but that wasn’t my intention. We’re going to get them to take the original out of its frame.”

Neal grinned. “You going to spill your drink on it?”

Gordon gave him a disapproving look. “Of course not. I’m going to pay someone else to spill their drink on it.”

“Right. And when do you plan on doing this?”

“I’ll let you know,” Gordon said, eyeing him shrewdly. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t entirely trust you. You’ll have enough time to prepare the paintings, that much I promise you.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “I’d best be going, I have an appointment. But I want to see you tomorrow, three o’clock, outside the museum.”

“I won’t be alone.”

“I’m aware,” Gordon said with a smile. “But it would be suspicious if we didn’t act at all suspiciously, don’t you think? We’ll meet outside the museum and . . . take a walk.”

“Great,” Neal said. “I’ll see you then.”

“I look forward to it,” Gordon said. He shook Neal’s hand and left. 

Neal didn’t waste any time in calling Peter once he’d shut the door behind him. “Yeah?” Peter mumbled, sounding half-asleep. 

“You shouldn’t nap,” Neal admonished him. “It’ll totally mess up your circadian rhythm.”

“You and the circadian rhythms,” Peter groaned. “What did you want, Neal?”

Neal sprawled out across the sofa where he could see the Klimt on the easel. “Taylor came to see me.” 

“What?” Peter said, sounding much more awake. “Just now?”

“He did book the hotel, Peter,” Neal pointed out. “He knows where I live.”

“What did he say?” 

“Not much. I tried to get some details out of him, but all he’d say was that he wanted to meet me tomorrow outside the museum. He said we’d ‘take a walk.’”

“Case the place, he means,” Peter said. “What time?”

“Three o’clock. I’ll probably get more details then. But he’s being very cagey, Peter,” Neal added. “I don’t think he made me during the Yankee Stadium heist, but it’s possible he’s heard something. What with this being an international case and all, I think we should be extra cautious.”

“What did you have in mind?” Peter asked, slowly. 

“I think I should sign the forgery. Subtly, somewhere Gordon won’t notice it. But that way the forgery will be easier to spot, and there won’t be any questions if something goes wrong.”

“And also makes it a copy, rather than a forgery,” Peter pointed out. “Thereby keeping your own hands clean.”

“That, too,” Neal said. “I know you think I have no sense of self-preservation, Peter, but I don’t want to go back to prison with three months left in my sentence.”

“Yeah, it’d be pretty stupid to do that twice,” Peter said, wryly. He was quiet for a moment. “All right. Do it. But you’d better make sure it isn’t anywhere Gordon will see it. Meanwhile, I’ll contact Doyle, let her know we need to get a team together for your and Gordon’s meet tomorrow.”

“Thanks. What time does El get in?”

“Before then. She’ll get a cab to the hotel. I have meetings all morning, so you’ll probably see her before I do.” Peter yawned. “When’s Sara coming back?”

“In time for dinner, she said. I was going to paint until then.”

“Mind if I join you guys for dinner? I know I’m putting a damper on the romance, but I’m afraid I’ll sleep through it otherwise.”

“Of course you’re welcome to join us,” Neal said, with only a small mental sigh. “And tomorrow night when El’s here I think we should all go out. Somewhere nice.”

“Not too nice,” Peter objected. “The exchange rate is ridiculous.”

Neal managed to control his groan of exasperation. “Fine, not _too_ nice. I’ll call you when Sara gets here, all right? Try not to fall asleep.”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter said, not sounding as though he was going to try very hard. Neal rolled his eyes and disconnected. 

Neal glanced at his watch and decided he had enough time to try and get something done on _Herrengasse_ before Sara returned. He set the Klimt aside, carefully, and fetched the smaller canvas from the closet. He started sketching the painting out on the canvas, lightly in pencil, trying to get the proportions right based on the high-quality print-out Gordon had given him. 

He had just finished and was thinking about mixing paints to get started on the base, when his phone buzzed. It was Sara, texting him to let him know that she was on her way up. He barely had enough time to swap the canvases out and hide the smaller one away before she knocked at the door. 

“Hey,” he said, opening it for her. She’d changed her clothes, and she had an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. He kissed her. “Remind me to talk to the front desk about getting you a keycard.”

“I will,” she said, and took her bag into the bedroom. Neal followed, leaning in the threshold and watching her step out of her heels. “What?” she asked, glancing up. 

“Nothing. Just . . . you.”

She shook her head at him. “Whatever, Caffrey. What’d you do with your afternoon? Work on the forgery?”

“Fell asleep on the couch, actually,” Neal said with a touch of sheepishness. He knew she’d notice he hadn’t made any progress. “Actually, if you don’t mind - Peter said he’d like to go to dinner with us, but it’s a little early still. I’d like to get some more done before he comes up.”

“Sure,” Sara said, and from her bag produced a bottle of wine. “I’m going to pour myself a glass of this, you want some?”

“No, thanks,” Neal said. “Maybe after I’m done. Uh, stop me in an hour or so?” Otherwise he was likely to get wrapped up in it and lose track of time again.

He didn’t quite manage to reach the same zone he’d gotten to the day before, but that was probably a good thing. He remained aware while he was working of Sara moving around the suite; she took a bath and then stayed in the bedroom for a while, probably putting things away, before coming back out and curling up on the sofa where she could watch him work. That might have bothered a lot of artists, but it didn’t bother Neal. Especially since he knew damn well that Sara had a serious competence kink.

When his hour was up, she came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, then slid around to the side to look at it more closely. “That’s coming along well. How much longer, do you think?”

“A few more hours.” Neal set his brush down and let out a long breath. “Can you call Peter? I’m going to get cleaned up.”

“Sure,” Sara said. But when Neal moved away, she snagged him by the hand and reeled him back in for a kiss, long and deep and complex. Neal felt his pulse quicken, and he was about to suggest they forget about dinner when she let him go. “Later,” she promised him with a small, sexy smirk. 

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Neal said, and went to change into something less paint-splattered. He grinned to himself: _Serious_ competence kink. 

Sara was gone already when Neal woke the next morning. She had a very long day ahead of her, she’d told him the night before, trying to wrap things up before being out the rest of the week. Peter had a long day as well - meetings in the morning, and then he’d be involved in the surveillance of Neal’s meeting with Gordon at three. El would arrive in a couple of hours, but until then he had a stretch of unsupervised time to work on the Ziegler. He rolled out of bed, pulled on his khakis, and got to work.

He was able to make good progress over the course of the morning, and, to his surprise, found himself liking the painting more and more. In the canon of great European art, it would never even be a footnote, but as a painting, there was something charming about it: the Viennese café, the well-dressed patrons, the evening light. Neal liked it, even if it was a little sentimental. His own work tended more toward cityscapes, but maybe he’d try a street scene of New York sometime. He could give it to Sara to hang in her apartment here in London. 

When it came, the knock at his door startled him. “Who is it?” he called, already moving to hide the Ziegler. 

“It’s Elizabeth.” 

Neal glanced at his watch. He’d lost track of time again. “Coming,” he said, moving the Klimt forgery carefully back into place on its easel. 

El looked surprisingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for someone who’d just come off a transatlantic flight. “Hey, welcome to London,” Neal said, hugging her carefully to avoid getting paint on her blouse. “How was the flight?”

“Not bad. I slept some. I see you’ve been working.”

“Yup,” Neal said, gesturing toward the Klimt. “Have you talked to Peter yet? He’s in meetings all day, except for this afternoon when I meet Gordon. I’d offer to play tour guide, but.” Neal shrugged. “Interpol pretty much doesn’t want me to leave the hotel.”

“So I heard,” El said sympathetically. “It’s okay, I can entertain myself. Though right now I’m starving.”

“That, I can do something about. You want to head downstairs and get some breakfast at the hotel restaurant? My treat.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, sweetie. Believe me, I was glad to come - I’ve been trying to talk Peter into a European vacation for years.”

Neal shrugged. “I know, but I appreciate you being there for Sara. Let me buy you breakfast as a token of my appreciation, all right? Just give me a couple minutes to shower and change my clothes.”

He showered and changed in record time and came out to find El curled up on the couch with her Kindle. They headed downstairs; it was late enough now that the restaurant was mostly empty, but they were still serving breakfast. They were given a table for two by the window, where they could look out on the square.

They both ordered eggs with bacon, and Neal ordered croissants as well. “So,” El said, once the waiter had gone. “How is Sara? I’ve only talked to her just the one time.”

“I think she’s holding up pretty well. She seems to be sleeping all right, at least. I’m still trying to talk her into staying with me after the surgery, but she’s been a little reluctant.”

El nodded. “She’s working today?”

“Yeah. But she said she’d be up for a late dinner if the four of us wanted to go out.”

The waiter returned with their croissants. They were flaky, buttery, and perfect, and Neal was reminded of just how close he was to France. So close, and yet, so far. El asked about the work, and Neal told her about the Klimt he was forging. He asked in turn about the event - a retirement gala for the CEO of a Fortune 500 company - that had kept her in New York over the weekend, and she made them both laugh with tales of the man’s extremely eccentric demands, surpassed only by the demands of his much younger wife. 

“So what are you planning on seeing this afternoon?” Neal asked, wistfully. The waiter had come to take their plates and they were both sitting with coffee. Neal was putting off heading back up to his room for just a little longer.

“The weather is so nice today that it seems a shame to stay indoors,” El said. “I thought I might take a walking tour of Highgate Cemetery.”

Neal blinked. “Interesting choice.” That wouldn’t have made even his list of top twenty things to do in London.

El laughed, probably at his expression. “I did a semester abroad in college, and I lived near there. I want to see if the neighborhood is still the same, and see if the cemetery is like I remember it. It’s been twenty years since I was last here.”

“Ah,” Neal said, and started folding his napkin into an origami flower. “Yeah, about that - Peter told me about the trip I disrupted before. I’m sorry about that.”

El shrugged. “I was pretty mad at the time, though it’s not like you _knew_. Quite honestly, I was a lot more angry with Peter. He knew damn well how important the trip was to me. I almost went by myself.”

“You could have,” Neal pointed out. 

“I could have,” El agreed. “Now, I might. But at the time - well, I was young still, and we hadn’t been married very long. I was worried that if I went without him, I might end up breaking something I couldn’t fix.” She shrugged. “Anyway, we’re here now.”

“Yes, you are,” Neal said, and handed her the flower he’d made.

She smiled and tucked it into her pocket. “Shall we?” 

“Yes,” Neal said. He signed the bill and they took the elevator back up; El got off at her own floor after wishing him ‘happy painting.’

By some minor miracle, the weather held that afternoon for Neal’s meet with Gordon. Peter and Interpol had coordinated a perimeter, but Gordon was known for his aversion to violence, so it wasn’t a very tight one. They’d be listening in, making it impossible to talk to Gordon about the actual heist, but it was a great opportunity to feed Interpol the information they wanted them to have.

He found Gordon on a bench by the museum, reading a copy of _The London Times_. “Hey there,” Neal said as he strolled up. 

“Hello, Neal,” Gordon said, and hugged him; he wouldn’t feel the mike, but Neal made sure to catch his eye. “How are you this fine afternoon?”

Neal shrugged. “I’m in London, the weather’s nice, and we have work to do. What’s to complain about?”

Gordon laughed. “Indeed. Come, take a walk with me.”

They stayed far enough from the museum to avoid catching the attention of the guards, but not so far that they couldn’t observe the relevant entrances and exits. “So,” Gordon said after a moment, “how would you do it?”

“The roof,” Neal said, decisively. “It’s the weakest point in any museum. But getting the forgery inside in its frame might be difficult - it’s a large work, as you know.”

“It is,” Gordon said, raising his eyes and shading them to better see the roof itself. “So we won’t do that. Instead, we’re going to persuade them to take the painting out of its frame.”

“Ah,” Neal said, feigning enlightenment. “I see. And what about the security?”

“I have a few gadgets that will help with that,” Gordon said. “We’ll take care of the cameras with video jammers. But security on the paintings in the exhibition halls won’t be an issue, of course.”

“Of course,” Neal echoed. “Won’t the jammers be a bit obvious? Especially if all the cameras go down at once.” 

“Normally, yes. But I’ve got a nifty new piece of tech that jams them by looping the last ten seconds of footage over and over, rather than causing a lot of snow.”

“I see.” Neal was silent for a second or two, watching the coming and goings of docents out of a side entrance to the museum. “And what’s my role in all of this going to be? This sounds like a one-man job.”

Gordon chuckled. “That would be because it is, and I’ll be the one pulling it. But I could use a distraction, in case I do end up tripping an alarm. If all goes well, they won’t realize the painting in their possession isn’t the real one, but I do like to have a contingency plan, in case all doesn’t go well.”

Neal stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to give Gordon an incredulous look. “So, what, you want me to wear burglar black and act suspiciously?”

“Precisely. Though I suggest you try and avoid actually getting arrested. That would be so very tedious.”

Neal grimaced. “Yeah, no kidding. But seriously, man. You’re not going to let me do any of the fun stuff?”

“I thought forgeries were ‘fun stuff’ for you,” Gordon said, amused.

“There’s no adrenaline rush involved. You didn’t bring me all this way just to have me do the forgery, did you?”

Gordon shook his head. “As I said, your role during the actual job will be to draw attention away from me. That might very well make the difference between a successful job and one that ends in me getting arrested.”

“But it takes no skill,” Neal argued. 

“What are you suggesting, then?” Gordon asked. “That I complicate the heist just to keep you entertained? Simpler is better, Neal. Some jobs are complicated, and I know you like those, but this one isn’t. We’re going to keep it as simple as possible.”

“But -” Neal protested.

“This is how people stay out of prison, Neal,” Gordon said, sharply. “I think you could do with a few lessons on how to accomplish that.”

 _Burn_. The whole conversation was an act to feed Interpol the information they wanted them to have, but _that_ felt real enough. Neal snapped his mouth shut. “Point taken,” he muttered. “Fine. When is all of this going down?”

“Wednesday at closing. I’ll be in touch with more details later.” Gordon’s hand landed on Neal’s shoulder and squeezed. “This will be fun, Neal. I promise.”

“If you say so,” Neal said, doing his best to sound disgruntled and begrudging. 

“I do,” Gordon said, and turned away, melting into the crowd on the sidewalk. 

Neal turned in the opposite direction. Peter and Agent Doyle were in a van a couple blocks away. Gordon was smart, Neal thought with admiration. Museum security would now ignore Neal entirely, and they wouldn’t be looking for tech that could take down the security in the exhibition halls, or paying attention to anything except the Klimt in the restoration room. That would give Neal a lot of freedom to get inside and switch out the real Herrengasse with the forgery. 

“God help me, I kind of like the guy,” Peter said afterward, when he and Neal were alone in a car on the way back to Interpol’s offices.

Neal rolled his eyes. “Only because he lectured me on staying out of prison.”

“Yup,” Peter said. “Makes me wonder if you’d met him earlier, if you’d had him as a mentor instead of Moz, if you’d ever have gone to prison.”

“Moz did all right by me,” Neal said, more defensively than he meant to. “It was my own damn fault I landed in prison, not his.”

“I’m not saying otherwise,” Peter said. “But you have to admit that Taylor’s good. And he’s pretty much an expert at avoiding prison.”

“True,” Neal said, slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe.” It would’ve been nice to avoid prison, he thought. He’d been lucky, relatively speaking, but it still hadn’t been a cakewalk. And it’d been boring as hell. But avoiding prison meant also never having a partnership with Peter, and he’d certainly have never run into Sara again - at least not in the same capacity. 

Being stuck inside a conference room at Interpol all afternoon wasn’t Neal’s idea of a good time, but in this case it was at least informative. Just as Neal had hoped, the plan was to let the heist happen and catch Gordon immediately afterward with the stolen painting on him. That suited the actual plan perfectly, because if Gordon wasn’t caught inside the museum, in the act of “stealing” the painting, then catching him with Neal’s copy on him afterward would be circumstantial evidence at best. Any decent lawyer, and Neal had no doubt that Gordon knew plenty, would get him out of that without it ever going to trial.

Midway through the afternoon, Peter asked one of the younger agents working on the case to take Neal back to the hotel, so he could continue work on the forgery. Neal was torn between wanting to stay and gather more intel and wanting to work on the Klimt. But arguing would just look weird, Neal suspected, and so he went back to the hotel without any comment.

Alone in his suite, he called Gordon to let him know what he’d learned at Interpol that afternoon, then got to work on the _Herrengasse_ , since he could count on a few hours of undisturbed work time. He set an alarm for five o’clock, and when it went off he switched the paintings out, setting up the Klimt and getting to work. The light wasn’t quite as good by then, but he needed to be able to show Peter progress or he’d wonder what Neal was doing with himself all afternoon.

Eventually he lost the light completely and had to stop. He took a shower, and then, feeling somewhat dehydrated, drank one of the complimentary hotel bottles of water before pouring himself a glass from the bottle of wine Sara had opened yesterday. He was relaxing out on the balcony, watching the street lights come on as dusk faded into night, when he heard the door to the suite open. 

"Neal?" Peter called. 

"On the balcony," he called back. Peter came out, followed by Elizabeth. "Wine?" he asked, holding up the bottle, which had just enough left in it for two glasses. There was only one other chair out here, but they could get cozy.

"Yes, please," El said, and went back inside to fetch two more glasses.

"How was Highgate?" Neal asked her as he poured for them both. As predicted, El and Peter had squished themselves into the single chair. Peter had his arm wrapped around El’s waist, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"Very peaceful and a little creepy, which is just how I remembered it."

Peter accepted his glass of wine from Neal. "I saw the painting. Looks like it's almost done."

"Yup," Neal said, handing El her glass. "Just a few finishing touches, and then we'll need to age it. I've made arrangements with Gordon for that."

"Good," Peter said. "It's all coming together, then."

Neal leaned back in his chair and cradled his glass of wine against his chest. "Yup. This’ll be a big win for you, won't it? Catching Gordon Taylor."

"For us," Peter corrected. "I'm surprised you don't have more misgivings. Last time, you seemed . . . ambivalent."

Neal shrugged. "You said it yourself, Peter. Even you have to like the guy. Haven't you ever thought twice? Wondered if someone really deserved it?"

"No," Peter said firmly. 

"Hon," El said, gently reproachful. 

Peter sighed. "Yes, all right, occasionally. I did think about what I was doing to your life when I put you away. You were so young, and you were so smart, and I hated locking all that potential up for the next four years, even though it should've been a lot longer."

"Allegedly," Neal inserted. 

"Yes, fine, _allegedly_ should have been a lot longer. But I also didn't think I'd be doing you any favors by not putting you away, basically for the same reasons. You were young and smart, and like most young, smart people, you were cocky as hell. I thought that if I didn't stop you, you might very well end up dead."

"You might have been right about that," Neal said, slowly. "But was I the only one?"

Peter shrugged. "You do the crime, you do the time, that's the way it works. It wasn't really a matter of thinking you didn't deserve it, because you did. But . . . I did think about it. And last year." Peter stopped. 

"Honey," El said, even more gently. Neal glanced up at the two of them and saw that she was stroking his hair. 

"It's fine, El," Peter assured her. "After I - after I got out," he said to Neal. "I had a period where I wondered if this was really what I wanted to be doing with my life anymore. It didn't last very long, but for a couple of weeks . . . I thought about it."

Neal stared at him. "You never said anything. You just came back and slotted right back in like those six weeks never happened."

Peter gave him a small smile. "I'm very good at compartmentalizing. Though in that case I might've compartmentalized myself right into early retirement or a nervous breakdown if not for my very smart wife and the very good therapist she made me see. Who, by the way, I would recommend to you if you ever decide to stop ignoring the oversized baggage you carry around with you."

"Thank you, Dr. Freud," Neal said, wryly. "I'll let you know. My last experience with a therapist was pretty sub-par." Peter grimaced in agreement. "Anyway, to answer your original question - yeah, I have some misgivings. It makes me feel pretty terrible, to be honest." Or it would have, if he'd thought this would actually end with Gordon in prison. "But it's the job, isn't it?"

"It is," Peter agreed. "As long as you remember that."

The conversation stalled. The silence wasn't awkward, precisely, but it was a little uncomfortable. Neal didn't know what Peter was thinking, but he was thinking about those two weeks after Peter had gotten out, when he'd been suffering and never said a word to Neal about it. By the look on El's face, and the way she continued to stroke Peter’s hair, he thought she might have been thinking about the same thing. 

He was just about to break the silence with something incredibly banal about the weather in London since they’d arrived, when his phone buzzed. He glanced at it. "Sara's leaving work," he reported. “She says she managed to swing reservations at Berners Tavern through a Sterling-Bosch client.” 

Peter audibly sighed. Elizabeth smacked him lightly on the arm. “Stop it,” she told him. “I swear, Peter Burke, I don’t want to hear the words ‘exchange rate’ leave your mouth tonight. I mean it,” she added, when Peter gave her a baleful look. “You’re in London. _We’re_ in London. And we’ll never be able to enjoy ourselves if you’re calculating down to the penny how much everything is costing you.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll . . . do my best,” Peter said, grudgingly. El rewarded him with a kiss, and Neal hid his smile behind his wine glass. 

The name “Berners Tavern” belied a seriously swanky restaurant, with beautiful oak paneling, low lighting, and very private tables. Sara was waiting for them in the bar when they arrived, but they were swiftly shown into the dining room by a solicitous maitre'd. Neal raised his eyebrows at her as they were seated. “What did you recover for the head chef?” he murmured. 

“Not the head chef - the owner,” she said with a sly smile. “And I really can’t say.”

It had been a while since Neal had had a meal this extravagant. True to his word, Peter clearly did his best not to think about the price of everything. The words _exchange rate_ never crossed his lips, though Neal did hear him suck in a breath through his teeth when he opened the menu. Peter was a guy who liked good food, and he wasn’t unadventurous, but his tastes tended to run more to the pedestrian (and the affordable). But even if the food was more complicated than he was used to, he didn’t have anything bad to say about it. He took the first bite of his pork belly, ordered after a silent but intense argument with Elizabeth, and closed his eyes. “Oh my God,” he said aloud.

Neal, cutting into his own perfectly cooked piece of halibut, stifled a laugh and exchanged smiles with both Sara and Elizabeth. 

Neal had a feeling that Sara was going to try and pay for dinner; she’d never have chosen such an expensive restaurant if she hadn’t planned on paying for the meal herself. But Neal also suspected she didn’t realize the depths of stubbornness Peter was capable of achieving, and he braced himself for the inevitable argument as dinner wound down. But it seemed he’d underestimated either her understanding of Peter Burke or her level of trickery. Just as they were about to ask for the check, she went to the bathroom and came back having paid the bill. 

“What?” El said, blankly, when she said it was taken care of. “Sara, no.”

Sara waved her hand. “They comp’d the wine. I told you, they’re very good clients.”

“But the food,” Peter said. “Sara, seriously, you can’t.”

“I can,” she said, catching his gaze and holding it. “After everything you guys have done for me, after everything you’re _doing_ for me right now - Peter, let me treat you guys to a nice meal. It’s the least I can do.”

Peter looked like wanted to argue, but something made him change his mind; Neal couldn’t tell if he’d remembered the price of his pork belly, if El had kicked him under the table, or if he’d just decided to be gracious at the last moment. He nodded. “Thank you. Though I haven’t done much of anything. I plucked a few strings to get us over here, but you should really be thanking Gordon Taylor.”

“And in the unlikely event I ever meet him, I will,” Sara said, dryly. “But for now, you’ll just have to accept that I’m grateful.”

They wandered the streets around the restaurant a little after dinner in a futile attempt to walk off the food. The neighborhood was lovely - tree-lined, full of small shops, and relatively quiet. Sara and El meandered off together to window shop; another time, Neal would have meandered with them, but he fell back to talk to Peter. “Hey,” Neal said to catch his attention.

Peter had been watching El with a fond smile on his face, but he glanced at Neal, frowning faintly. “Hey,” he returned. “Everything okay?”

“I wanted to ask if you got to talk to Doyle at all. About tomorrow?.” 

Peter sighed. “I did. She wasn’t wholly unsympathetic, though frankly I’m not sure she bought my explanation that Taylor’s heist just _happened_ to coincide with Sara’s surgery. But in all honesty, it’s not really her decision. Her boss is deeply suspicious of you, for obvious reasons. He really doesn’t want you wandering around London.”

“I wouldn’t be wandering,” Neal said indignantly. “And I’d be with Elizabeth.” Peter gave him a dry look, and Neal sighed. “I know, I know. I thought it was worth asking.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, subdued. “I wish I could do more. I know how I’d feel if El were having surgery and I couldn’t be there. But El will be there for Sara, and you can be there for her afterward.”

“I hope so,” Neal said, reminded that Sara still hadn’t said whether she was planning to recover at the hotel with Neal or at home after the surgery. He didn’t dare bring it up yet. Sara clearly didn’t want to talk about her health or the surgery; any time the conversation had threatened to touch on that particular topic at dinner, she had deflected. Neal respected that, but he knew they couldn’t avoid it forever. 

Predictably, perhaps, it was Elizabeth who finally brought it up, as they took the elevator up to their rooms, asking when they would have to leave the following morning to get to the hospital. Sara - just as predictably - tried to insist that she’d be fine on her own. El crossed her arms over her chest and frowned, and Sara finally relented. “I’ll have to leave about seven,” she said. “But if you wanted to sleep in and come later -”

“Nonsense,” El said, as the elevator stopped at her and Peter’s floor. “Seven it is. I’ll see you then. Thank you, again, for dinner.”

“It was my pleasure,” Sara said, sounding as though it truly was.

Alone in the elevator, Neal circled her waist with his arm and pulled her toward him. “About tomorrow.”

“I’ll come back here,” she said, and leaned into him, so subtly he thought he might have imagined it. 

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Thank you.”

***

Neal woke when Sara did the next morning, very early. He dozed while she took her shower, and then woke again when she came out to finish getting ready. She wouldn’t be staying overnight in the hospital, but she still threw a few things into a bag to take with her, including some comfortable clothes to leave the hospital in that afternoon. 

“I’ll try to be here when you get back,” Neal said, watching her. 

“It’s fine if you can’t be. It’s a minor procedure.”

“That’s not the point.”

She stopped and looked at him, and the expression on her face was one that Neal wasn’t used to seeing on her. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said it was tender. “I know it isn’t. But you’re here to work, and we both know that might get in the way. If it does, I don’t want you to feel bad about it.”

Neal knew better than to promise anything of the sort. “I’ll try.”

Elizabeth knocked on the door promptly at seven. Neal gave Sara one last kiss and hugged her. He didn’t tell her he loved her, because he knew that wasn’t what she needed - or wanted - to hear right then. But he thought she knew. He hoped she did. 

Peter came up only a few minutes after El and Sara had left. He had meetings all morning, but he dragged Neal to breakfast in the hotel restaurant first. Neal appreciated the gesture, but the truth was that all he could think about was Sara, having surgery without him there. He suspected he was pretty poor company, by turns distracted, sullen, and irritable. Peter didn’t seem to mind, but by the time they finished breakfast and he left for Interpol, Neal was relieved to head back up to the suite, where he could lose himself in _Herrengasse in the Evening_.

It worked, for a while at least. The painting was starting to take shape on the canvas, and Neal concentrated on getting the brushstrokes right. He could have used a little more time in front of the painting itself, but if everything went well, no one would have any reason to authenticate it.

He was taking a break to drink some water and check in with El when the burner phone that Gordon had given him buzzed. _I’m on my way over_ , Gordon had written. Neal rinsed and dried his brushes and went to put a shirt on, just in time to answer the door when Gordon knocked. 

“Good timing,” Neal said, standing aside. “I’ve been working on the Ziegler.”

“Oh?” Gordon crossed the room to look at it, his step notably quicker and more eager than usual. He leaned forward to peer at the canvas. “Nice work. Very nice indeed.” 

“Thanks,” Neal said. “So, what brings you up here?”

“Some final details,” Gordon said, making himself at home on the suite’s sofa. “And I thought you perhaps could use some distraction.”

Neal blinked. “That’s . . . thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

Gordon shrugged. “I’m a thief but I’m not heartless,” he said, mildly. “And I like you, Neal. Why else would I be going to all this trouble?”

“I thought,” Neal said, and turned to look at the half-finished forgery. 

Gordon nodded. “That’s part of it. But I also feel sympathy for you - and for your fiancée. It’s not often you find a woman who isn’t in the life who’s willing to stay with men like us.”

Neal sat down on the sofa beside him. “The first time I met Sara face to face, she called me a sociopath,” he said, almost wistfully. “It was at my trial. She testified against me.”

Gordon laughed. “That sounds like quite the story.”

Neal grinned. “It is. I wish you could meet her - I think you’d like her. But I’m not sure how she’d feel about you.”

Gordon flashed him a grin. “Probably for the best that we not find out. But onto business. I thought it went well yesterday at the museum.”

“It did,” Neal said, leaning back and stretching out. “I doubt Peter and Agent Doyle will be paying much attention to me at all while things are going down. Can I guess what you’re thinking in terms of the heist?” Gordon nodded, making a _go on_ gesture. “You’ll have someone spill their drink on the Klimt in the late afternoon. It’ll get taken into the restoration room and removed from its frame, which means that we can walk in with the forgery in a poster tube.”

Gordon nodded. “Correct so far.”

“You still have to get inside, though,” Neal continued, frowning. “And you can’t use the roof, now that Peter and Interpol will be watching it. So . . . delivery uniform?”

“And contacts and some facial hair,” Gordon said, with an approving smile. “I’m borrowing a truck from a friend. I’ll show up at the loading dock at closing, just as everyone is trying to leave for the day. They’ll want to be rid of me as fast as possible, so when I say I have a delivery for one of the curators, they won’t look too closely.”

“And once you’re inside, you can shut down the security and knock out the cameras.”

“Precisely,” Gordon said, tapping the side of his nose. “Meanwhile, of course, you’ll have your own part to play.”

“ _Herrengasse_ is a lot smaller than the Klimt,” Neal said, glancing over at it. “I can walk in with it in a messenger bag, even in a frame. If we had a frame.”

“We’ll have a frame,” Gordon assured him. “A friend of mine is working on one even as we speak.”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “How many friends do you have in this town?”

Gordon smiled, showing just a hint of teeth. “As many as I need. Now, my intention is for you to use the front door, more or less. But you’ll have to wait for me to text you with the _Go_ sign. At that point, you’ll move in, swap out the Herrengasse for its forgery, and walk back out again, leaving it for me at a secure location nearby.”

That sounded simple enough, except for the fact that it still left Gordon holding the bag. “And what about you? You said you weren’t going to try and outrun Interpol.”

Gordon shook his head. “But I do plan on losing my disguise along the way, so the man they catch is going to look very different from the man anyone at the museum might have seen, making it hard to get the B&E charges to stick. I’m going to try and lose the painting by then, too, but on the off-hand chance they catch me with it, I’ll be holding the copy.”

“They’ll try and get a conviction anyway,” Neal warned him. “Peter’s a bulldog. Once he’s got you in his teeth, he won’t let go.”

Gordon reached over and squeezed Neal’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. I have, if it comes down to it, excellent legal counsel. But I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“I hope not.” Neal eyed Gordon for a moment, feeling a flicker of unease. He couldn’t have said what caused it, but it was definitely there. “You’re very calm about all of this.”

Gordon shrugged. “I trust my gut. It’s almost never wrong. And right now, my gut is telling me that this is all going to work out to everyone’s advantage.”

Neal smirked. “You sound like Peter. He’s got a gut-detector, too.” He looked away, out the window toward the square, and couldn’t help thinking about Peter, who had taken him to breakfast that morning before going to his first meeting, just because he knew that Neal needed the company. This wouldn’t work out to his advantage. Neal supposed that as long as the Klimt wasn’t stolen, it wouldn’t work out to his _dis_ advantage either, but Peter would probably still take some heat for letting Taylor get away. It wouldn't do him any favors with the FBI brass, that was for sure. 

He could feel Gordon watching him. “You don’t like deceiving Peter, do you,” he said at last. “This bothers you, what we’re doing.”

“It does,” Neal admitted. Perhaps that was the source of his disquiet. “Peter is . . . he’s family. His wife is at the hospital with Sara right now, because I can’t be there. I don’t like deceiving them.” He took a deep breath. “But Sara is my family, too, and I’ll do what I have to for her.”

Gordon nodded. “I understand. Family,” his eyes flickered briefly to the painting, “causes us to do strange things sometimes. Irrational things. Like risking your neck to steal a painting that isn’t even worth very much.”

Neal nodded but didn’t say anything. They both sat quietly for a moment, until Neal’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it and saw a text from Elizabeth: _Sara is out of surgery. We should be back in a couple hours._

“Excellent,” Gordon said, when Neal relayed the news. “I’ll leave you to your painting, then. Will they both be completed by this evening in time for me to pick them up and take them to be aged?”

Neal nodded. It would be tight, but he could make it. “Eight o’clock okay?”

“Perfect,” Gordon said. He shook Neal’s hand and left. 

Neal worked on the Ziegler for another hour or so, until he judged it nearly complete, and then swapped it out for the Klimt. He ordered room service for lunch and ate it on the balcony, his phone always within reach. But it stayed silent, and he reminded himself that as long as everything was going well, El would have no reason to call. Afterward, he worked on perfecting the Klimt; when it was as good as it was going to get, he signed it, small and subtle, right at the bottom, with his initials. 

He blinked, then, coming out of the zone, and realized he was tired and his back ached. It was time for a break. He texted El, who wrote back that Sara was getting released now. She let him know that Sara was hungry, having not eaten anything since the night before. Normally, Neal would have run out to get some soup, but that wasn’t currently an option, and there wasn’t anything appropriate on the room service menu. He called down to the concierge and asked about having something delivered. Twenty minutes later, in exchange for a sizeable tip, Neal had an insulated container of Pret a Manger chicken soup.

It was just after four o’clock when Sara let herself and Elizabeth in with her keycard. "Hey," Neal said, sitting up on the sofa and throwing his book aside. El was behind her, but not too close, Neal noticed; he wondered if Sara had snapped at her for hovering. "How did it go?"

"It went okay," Sara said, sounding tired. She looked pale and there were lines at the corners of her mouth and between her brows that weren’t usually there. "They took some lymph nodes from under my arm. That hurts more than anything else."

Neal steered her over to the sofa. She gave him a dry look, but let herself be steered. "Do you have stuff for the pain?"

"Yes, nothing too strong. I'll take something with dinner."

"Remember what the nurse said," El said, perching herself on the arm of the sofa. "Nothing too spicy or heavy."

"I know," Sara said, then sniffed. "Do I smell chicken soup?" 

"You do," Neal said, reaching over to retrieve the bag. "Does that work for you?" 

"It does," she said, with a small smile in his direction. "But you need to eat, too, and so does Elizabeth."

"I'll go out and get something for Neal and me," El said, standing, before Neal could suggest ordering room service. Since he was rapidly becoming overly familiar with both that menu and the menu in the restaurant downstairs, he didn’t argue. "Any preference, Neal?"

"None at all," Neal said, smiling at her gratefully. "I'll eat anything."

El left. Sara took the top off her soup and leaned over it, breathing in the steam. "You're feeling okay?" Neal asked, tentatively.

"Yeah, I am. I'm not supposed to lift anything heavy, and the surgeon said I might be fatigued and sore for a couple of days. I'm definitely tired. Not really sore, though, not yet." She leaned against Neal, carefully not putting pressure on her incisions, while she ate her soup. "Mmm, this is good."

"I slaved all day," Neal said, pressing his lips to the crown of her head. 

She laughed. "What _did_ you do all day?"

"I painted," Neal said with a one-shouldered shrug, careful not to jostle her. "And worried."

She covered his hand with hers and squeezed it lightly. "You shouldn't have. I was in good hands. I have an excellent surgeon, and El was with me as much as possible."

"I know. But it was still surgery, and I still wish I could've been there."

Sara leaned her head against his shoulder. "You're here now. That's good enough for me."

El returned with Italian takeout for herself and Neal, which Sara eyed jealously. Neal promised to save her some of his for lunch tomorrow, and she looked somewhat mollified. She hid it well, but he could tell she wasn't at her best, not really. She moved slowly, keeping her left arm close to her side, and winced anytime she forgot and tried to lift it. Neal tried to be solicitous without being annoying; either he succeeded or she was in enough pain not to care, because after dinner she sent him out for some ice. 

When he came back to the room, El was putting her shoes on in the living room. Sara was nowhere to be seen, but Neal could hear the water running in the bathroom. "Peter just texted me," El said. "He said he's done for the day, and he asked me to meet him for a drink. Are you going to be okay here?"

"Yeah, I think so. Any special instructions?"

"Not too many," El said, standing, "and she seems to be being pretty sensible. She just took a painkiller so she might fall asleep early."

Neal nodded and thought that would probably be for the best, what with the unfinished Ziegler hidden away in the closet. "Thank you, for today," he said, as he saw El to the door. "It made me feel a lot better knowing you were with her."

El shook her head. "I'm glad I could be. She was telling me right up to the point we got to the hospital that she was fine, and I should go enjoy myself rather than sit in a waiting room all day. But once we were there, she stopped trying to get me to leave. Look after her tonight, all right? And call or text if you need anything."

"I will," Neal promised, and shut the door behind her. 

Sara was coming out of the en suite when Neal went into the bedroom. "I got your ice," he said. 

"Oh good," she said. "They gave me a ice pack at the hospital. I think I'm going to lie down with it for a while." She sat down on the bed, a strangely shaped piece of fabric in hand, and started putting ice into it. 

"Is it okay if I work?" 

Sara rolled her eyes. "Yes, Neal, of course. In fact, _please_ , stop hovering and go work."

Neal smiled. That was the Sara he knew. He hadn't realized until right then how much her quiet complacency had unnerved him. Sara Ellis wasn't supposed to just go with the flow. "I'll be in the other room if you need me."

"I won't," she said, already stretching out on the bed.

There was maybe an hour's worth of work left on the Ziegler. He tried to work quickly, aware of his deadline from Gordon and of Sara lying in the other room, but the quality of the light from the streetlamps - the most interesting aspect of the painting from his perspective - was trickier to get right than he'd expected. His respect for Georg Ziegler as an artist went up a notch. 

By the time he was done, it was almost time for Gordon to come and pick the paintings up. The Klimt was mostly dry - dry enough to be transported safely at least - but the Ziegler wasn't. He went into the bathroom, stealing past Sara's sleeping form, to grab the hair dryer. He took it back out into the living room, shutting the door to the bedroom behind him, and turned it on at its lowest setting, aiming it at the painting. He moved it carefully back and forth over the surface, trying to dry it evenly. 

He was nearly done when he heard it: a soft footfall and an indrawn breath. He turned and saw Sara standing there, eyes focused past him on the painting. He turned off the hair dryer. "Hey," he said, doing his best not to sound startled. "I thought you were asleep."

She didn’t look at him. "I thought I'd come watch you work. Neal, that isn't the Klimt."

There was no use denying this completely bald statement of fact. "No, it's not."

Her mouth tightened into a line. "Why are you painting something that isn't the Klimt? And don't lie to me," she added, swiftly. "Don't you dare lie to me, Neal."

"Because the Klimt isn't our target," Neal said. He set the hair dryer on the coffee table and turned to face her, turning his hands out, doing his best to project openness and honesty. Not that it would help if he couldn’t get her to look at him. "I never intended for us to steal the Klimt - I never intended us to steal anything at all. But Gordon wanted this one."

"Why?" Sara asked, finally looking at him, eyes narrowed. "It's almost - it’s almost _kitschy_. Why would Gordon Taylor, world famous thief and international man of mystery, want a kitschy painting no one's ever heard of? Is there, I don't know, some secret code built into it?"

Neal shook his head. "If there is, he hasn't told me. He wants it for sentimental reasons."

"Sentimental reasons," Sara repeated flatly. 

"Hey, world famous thieves and international men of mystery have feelings, too," Neal pointed out, a little defensively. "Especially about artwork their grandfathers painted that their own fathers spent their entire lives looking for."

Sara blinked. "Seriously?" Neal shrugged. "How'd it end up lost?"

"The painting dates from Vienna, 1941," Neal said. "I'm sure you can figure it out from there."

Sara pursed her lips. "I see. And you felt like this was - what? Some kind of penance for the U-boat full of Nazi loot?"

"Maybe," Neal said, looking away. _Ouch_. "But mostly, I needed Gordon's help, and this was how he'd give it to me. I won't even owe him anything when it's all over with. Better this now than a favor in ten years."

Sara tilted her head to the side, acknowledging, maybe, the truth of that. "And the Klimt?"

"Isn't going anywhere. It's the decoy."

She looked at him, hard, as though she were searching for something beneath the surface. "I believe you," she said at last, sounding a little baffled. "I don't know why, but I do. And all of this," she took a deep breath, "it was because you wanted to be here with me?"

"Yeah," Neal said, plainly. "It was."

She looked at the painting for a long time. Neal didn't know what she was thinking and didn't dare guess. Sara was comfortable with morally gray areas, but she liked to stay as much on the right side of the law as possible. And she was personally loyal to Peter, too. Neal had kept her out of everything so far, for her own sake - if something went wrong, he wanted her to be able to say she hadn't known and mean it - but also for his. She might protect him, or she might pick up her phone and call Peter. He didn't know, and he wouldn't until she did it. 

"You have the most uncanny ability to make me want to kiss you and hit you at the same time," she said at last. 

Neal didn't know what to say to that, so he fell back on an old stand-by: a charming smile and a quip. "I'm just talented that way."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, whatever you do, don't get caught. Because I’m telling you right now, I don't do prison visits."

"Not even for your fiancé?" Neal asked, putting his hand to his chest in a gesture of being mock-wounded. 

"Not even for my fiancé, no," she said, eyeing him without much humor. "A life lived through six inches of bulletproof Plexiglass isn't worth much."

Neal grimaced. "You have me there."

There was a light knock at the door. Neal checked the time and swore. "That's Gordon to pick up the paintings. Could you . . . ?"

"Pretend to be asleep, yes," she said, and padded back into the other room, pushing the door mostly shut behind her. 

Gordon had apparently procured his delivery uniform ahead of time, because he was wearing it when Neal answered the door. Neal held his finger to his lips, glancing toward the bedroom, and Gordon nodded. Carefully and efficiently, they packed both paintings up for transport. “Until tomorrow,” Gordon said, and disappeared down the hallway with a painting under each arm. 

Neal shut the door behind him. Then he went into the bedroom, where Sara was lying back on the bed with her ice pack tucked under her arm. He hovered in the doorway, unsure of his welcome. 

Neither of them spoke for at least full minute. At last, Neal cleared his throat. “I’d do it all over again.”

Sara sighed and turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “Being a hopeless romantic got you four more years on your sentence once already. Did you learn nothing?”

“Apparently not. I don’t regret it, Sara. I don’t.”

Sara sighed again, more deeply this time, and turned her head back to look up at the ceiling. “I just hope that’s still true at this time tomorrow.”

***

For the last year or so, Neal had been on his very best behavior. He had so little time left on his sentence, neither he nor Moz had wanted to rock the boat. He’d worked stings for the FBI, but that was never the same as pulling a job. An FBI sting had bureaucratic and legal support, and Neal rarely worked without backup. If the con was walking a tightrope, then doing it with the FBI was working with a net, but a real job, like the one he was about to pull off under Peter’s nose, was working without one. Both were exciting, but one was a lot more dangerous.

So Neal could hardly blame himself for being a little more keyed up than he normally would be as he made his way across Trafalgar Square toward the museum. Peter hadn’t seemed to notice how jumpy he was, but Neal could feel his palms starting to sweat. He’d settle once he was in the moment, but for now, he’d have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t feeling the pressure. 

About halfway down the block he paused, taking in the Interpol vehicles parked nearby. He’d sat in on the planning meeting earlier, so he knew exactly which entrances and exits they were watching closely - after all, Neal had given them the intel that had told them where to concentrate their manpower.

He took his burner phone out of his pocket and texted Gordon: _Interpol has eyes on the roof and the emergency exists to the north and the south._

Gordon answered swiftly: _Delivery dock?_

 _Clear,_ Neal replied. _West staff entrance also clear. Going in now._

Neal slipped the burner phone into his pocket and jogged around the building toward the staff entrance on the west side of the building. His messenger bag with his forgery of _Herrengasse_ was slung over his shoulder, jostling against his hip with every step. 

The staff entrance locked from the inside and had to be accessed with a keycard, but today it had been left unlocked by Gordon’s friend the docent. Neal slipped inside and locked the door behind him. He headed down the hallway, keeping an eye on the time; it was 6:05, and Gordon would be pulling up to the loading dock now, while the museum staff cleared patrons from the exhibition halls. He found the men’s room where he planned to hide until he got Gordon’s text and slid inside, heading straight to the disabled stall at the very end of the row. 

6:10. Gordon would be shutting down the cameras and bringing down the security systems. At 6:12, Neal’s phone buzzed: _Go._

Neal left the bathroom cautiously. The hallway was deserted, but in the distance he heard a brief shout. He grinned to himself. Right on schedule. 

He felt uncomfortably exposed as he passed through each of the exhibition halls, but if Gordon had done his job right - and he always did - the cameras weren’t functioning. He paused before entering the hall where _Herrengasse_ was hanging and sneaked a glance inside. It was empty of all security personnel, who had clearly been called away to deal with the “theft” in the restoration room. Neal slipped around the corner and into the hall, already opening his messenger bag. 

Gordon’s friend had done a masterful job of matching the frame. Neal himself could barely tell them apart, aside from the fact that the real painting was bolted to the wall. Neal was prepared with the right tools, but it still took longer than he would have like to get it unfastened. Replacing it cost him even more precious minutes, and by the time he was done he’d started to sweat. Peter was going to be looking for him, and he still had to deliver the painting. 

Finally, with the real painting in his bag and his forgery fastened to the wall, Neal stood. He took just a second to admire his own work and feel a swell of pride, then turned away. 

The alarm blared, loud and piercing. Neal swore and ran for the exit, adrenaline flooding his system, but the security gate was already coming down. Without the bag, he would have tried to slide beneath it, but that wasn’t an option. He swore, but already his years of experience and Moz’s excellent training were taking over. The security system was familiar to him; he’d dealt with it before. He opened the security panel and took his gloves off to cut the wires. Then, remembering with a grimace the last time he’d had to do this, he put his gloves back on before shoving the security door up and open. 

He had to shove his way through two more security gates before reaching the hallway to the staff entrance. But it wasn’t as deserted as he’d expected; two docents were standing there, talking heatedly. Neal flattened himself against the wall, then slipped inside a convenient supply closet, keeping the door cracked. 

“Hey, you two.” A security guard dressed in black passed by. “You need to be outside. We’re clearing the building.”

“What’s going on?” one of the docents asked as the guard herded them out. 

“You hear that alarm? You really need me to spell it out for you? It’s a security breach. Come on, now, _out_.” 

All three of them disappeared. Neal counted to five, then darted out and down the hall, emerging at last into the watery light of a dreary London afternoon. He jogged briskly down the steps toward the sidewalk, bracing himself for the sounds of pursuit, but none came. He slowed his gait, forcing himself to walk despite the urge to run. He even let himself glance curiously at the crowd of red-clad docents gathered in front of the museum. Everyone else passing by was staring, after all. But he didn’t stare too long; at the next intersection, he crossed the street toward a small park. On the way he passed a trash can and smoothly dumped his burner phone into it. 

There were not that many places in London that were good for a hand-off like this. The city had a surveillance web leftover from the worst days of the IRA that made New York’s look distinctly amateur. But the small park near the museum was a notable exception. 

Gordon had told Neal he’d know the drop point when he saw it, but he didn’t at first. He walked through the small park twice before he saw her. Gordon’s friend the docent wasn’t wearing her uniform, but rather jeans and a button down, and she was eating a pastry out of a grease-stained bag while sitting on a bench.

“Hello,” Neal said, slowing and then stopping in front of her. 

“Hello,” she returned, glancing up at him with a smile. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Neal said, even though it actually wasn’t. “I have something for our mutual friend.”

“I thought you might.” She put the pastry back in its bag and stood. Neal glanced around, but it really was a gray, dreary day, and no one was out except for the two of them. He handed the bag over. “No problems?” she asked.

“No problems,” Neal confirmed. The security gates hadn’t been an issue, after all. He hesitated; he should walk away now, he knew, but he found himself extremely curious. There was nothing of the hardened criminal about this woman, though she also didn’t look particularly nervous as she swung the messenger bag over her shoulder. 

“I have to ask,” he said. “What’s your stake in this?” She had to have one, he’d decided. There was no way she’d put so much at risk otherwise. 

She looked at him. “Gordon never told you?” Neal shook his head. “Then I shouldn’t say.”

“Not even to assuage my curiosity?” Neal tried, giving her his very best charming smile. 

She raised an eyebrow at him skeptically, but she did smile in return. “Let’s just say, we’ve both been waiting a long time for this.”

“So you’re his sister?” Neal guessed. “Or his cousin?”

She tilted her head, the corners of her mouth quirking up, and now that Neal was looking for it, he thought he could see a very slight similarity. Her eyes were brown where his were blue, but there was a similarity to the arch of their cheekbones, the shape of their eyes. “Something like that. And now, I’m going. But before I do, I have a message for you from Gordon. He told me to tell you to take care of yourself.”

“I think I’ll be seeing him shortly,” Neal said, a little wryly, “but thanks.”

She nodded. She turned, adjusted the weight of the strap across her shoulder, and left the park. Neal watched until she melted into the crowd at the next intersection, then headed back toward the museum. 

British cop cars looked very different from American ones, but the flashing lights were universal and unmistakable. Neal jogged up, breathing hard as though he’d just looped around the museum, but hung back at the edges of the crowd. He fully expected to see Gordon in cuffs at the center of the commotion, and if he really had been part of the sting that’d brought down Gordon Taylor, he wouldn’t have been eager to be seen by the man himself. 

“ _Neal!_ ”

Neal turned at the sound of Peter’s voice. He sounded _pissed_. 

“Peter,” Neal said, grinning at him despite his tone. Peter had probably been looking for him for minutes now; the handoff had taken longer than he’d expected. “You get our man?”

“What do you think?” Peter replied, a hard edge to his voice that Neal hadn’t heard in quite some time - and hadn’t missed much, to be honest.

Neal’s stomach sank suddenly. “What?”

“He got away,” Peter said, throwing his arms up. 

“ _What_?” Neal demanded. “ _How_?”

“Two excellent questions I’d like answers to,” Peter said grimly. “As does Agent Doyle. As does her _boss_. He vanished into thin air. Left nothing behind but your forgery of the Klimt.”

“Wait,” Neal said, noticing for the first time that Peter actually had the rolled up painting in his hand. “Wait, Peter, look at it - are you sure it’s the forgery he left behind?”

“Of course it’s the forgery,” Peter snapped. He unfurled it. Neal’s eyes immediately darted to the place he’d signed it; in the bottom right hand corner, barely noticeable unless you knew it was there, were his initials.

 _Damn_ it. 

Neal looked up. Peter was watching him, eyes gone intent. “Neal. Why wouldn’t it be the forgery?”

Neal shook his head. “I don’t know, I just thought - I don’t know. He must’ve made me, Peter. I swear, I don’t know how he got away. I told you everything I knew. He must’ve made me.”

Peter didn’t answer immediately. Neal kept his mouth shut, knowing that to protest further would only mean digging his own grave. He was aware of Agent Doyle standing not ten feet away, handcuffs already in hand. There was no question whom _she_ thought was responsible for this. But Neal didn’t care about her. Neal cared about Peter, who wasn’t looking at him. Neal watched him, holding his breath, and couldn’t help thinking about that day, years ago now, when they’d stood together outside a burning warehouse. Neal had stared in bewilderment as Peter had accused him, out of the blue as far as Neal could tell, of stealing the art from the U-boat. He’d been shocked at how much that had stung, and even now he could remember with shocking clarity how much it had hurt. 

Peter had jumped to conclusions then; Neal could only hope he didn’t do the same thing now. Not that those conclusions would have been wrong in this case, exactly . . . but he’d never meant for it to end like this. Damn it, he’d even offered to pay Gordon what the job would’ve been worth. There’d been no _need_ to steal the Klimt.

Except that it was there, and Neal had made it easy. Looking back, he thought he should have seen this coming.

“Text Sara,” Peter said abruptly. 

“What?” 

“Text Sara,” Peter repeated. “Tell her you’re going to be a while. Then get your ass in the car. No detours.”

Neal nodded. Peter went to talk to Doyle, and Neal shot Sara a text: _Unexpected wrinkle. Going to be later than expected._

 _2-3 hours or 2-3 years?_ she sent back. 

It was no more than Neal himself was wondering, but he couldn’t admit that to her. _O ye of little faith,_ he wrote back.

 _I have exactly the right amount of faith in you, Caffrey_ , she replied, and that was when Peter shouted for him to hurry up. 

By the time Interpol and Agent Doyle were done with him, Neal wasn’t sure how many more ways he could say, _I don’t know what happened. This wasn’t the plan. He must have made me._ Doyle didn’t entirely seem to disbelieve him, but she also clearly thought he was holding out on them. To be fair, he was, even if he wasn’t lying outright: it really hadn’t been the plan, not in any way. 

He thought about giving them something - telling them where Gordon had been staying, or telling them to look into the docent. It probably would have helped him immensely, and he was pissed enough at Gordon for screwing him over like this that he thought about it. But in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to burn that bridge. It’d served him well enough this time around, and even though he didn’t intend to use it again - well, sometimes it helped to have friends in the right places. Gordon himself was proof of that. 

They’d taken his watch and his phone from him, so it was impossible to tell how long he was in the interrogation room, but it felt like at least two hours. Eventually, Doyle gave up and left the room. Neal twiddled his thumbs for another thirty minutes or so, wondering if they were done or if Doyle was letting him stew before coming back for more. He was just about to ask if he could use the restroom, when the door opened and Peter came in. 

He stood in front of the table, hands braced on the chair, and looked Neal. “Congratulations,” he said, without smiling. “For the moment, you've managed to avoid being arrested. I’m being allowed to take you back to the hotel before coming back to assist with the investigation.”

Neal suppressed his sigh of relief as he stood up. “You got any leads?”

“Not that I’m telling you about,” Peter said, sharply. Neal glanced at him, stung, and Peter shook his head. “We’ll talk in the car.”

Except they didn’t talk in the car. Peter didn’t say a word during the drive from Interpol’s offices to the hotel, and Neal couldn’t bring himself to break the silence. It was probably for the best, since they were being driven by an Interpol agent, who had undoubtedly been tasked with reporting back anything they said. But the silence still burned. 

At the hotel they both climbed out, and Peter led the way into the lobby. “I bet Taylor stuck us with the hotel bill, too,” he said, scowling as he crossed to the front desk, forcing Neal to hurry to keep up. “We’re moving somewhere cheaper tonight, this is ridiculous.”

Neal sighed but didn’t argue. It was exactly what he himself would’ve done, after all - leave the FBI holding the bag for an overly expensive hotel suite - and he’d have laughed all the way to his safehouse in the French Riviera. 

But apparently, that wasn’t Gordon’s style. “Your room is paid up through Friday, Mr. Greer,” the woman behind the desk said when Peter asked about checking out. “Yours as well, Mr. Burke. And I have messages for you both.” She handed each of them a small slip of paper. 

Neal unfolded his. _With my compliments, in exchange for your inconvenience,_ it read. He snorted. “What’s yours say?” he asked Peter. Peter handed it over, wordlessly, and Neal handed him his. 

_Well played, Agent Burke._

“At least this gives us something to work with,” Peter said. “We can try and follow the money, find out what credit card he used. I know, it’s a long shot,” he added, when Neal gave him a dubious look, “but it’s something. We don’t have a lot to go on at the moment. But obviously we can’t stay here on Gordon Taylor’s dime.”

“I have so far,” Neal pointed out.

“As part of the op,” Peter replied. “That’s different. Now that it’s over, we’re all moving somewhere within the FBI’s budget.”

“Tonight?” Neal said, raising his eyebrows. “Peter, come on. It’s already too late to check out without getting charged.”

“He’s right, sir,” the woman said. “If you check out now, I will have to charge for the use of both rooms tonight. I’m sorry, but it’s policy.”

“See?” Neal said to Peter. “It’s _policy_.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Fine. I need to get back to the office anyway. We’ll check out tomorrow.”

El had texted him that she was in their room, so Peter got off at his own floor, leaving Neal to continue up on his own. He found Sara curled up on the sofa under the comforter from the bed, dozing while she watched TV. He paused for a moment, watching her fondly, and slipped off his shoes before seating himself gingerly on the edge of the sofa beside her.

Despite his care, she blinked her eyes open sleepily. “Hey,” she murmured. 

“Hey,” Neal replied, and swept a few stray strands of hair out of her face with his hand. 

She smiled at him. “Well, you’re not in prison, so I guess that’s something.”

“Yeah, it is,” Neal said with a sigh. “How are you feeling?”

She made a wavering gesture with her hand. “Okay. Tired and sore, but okay. I’ve been trying to lay off the drugs. What happened?”

Neal looked toward the easel, still set up by the bank of windows, and let a wave of bitterness roll through him before answering. “He stole the Klimt. He wasn’t supposed to. The plan was always to leave the real painting behind. He was after the Ziegler, he told me, not the Klimt. But he stole it anyway.”

Sara was silent for a long time. Finally she sighed. “Neal, are you really surprised?”

“Yes,” Neal said, looking at her. “I know you won’t believe me, but there is honor among thieves. We had a mutually beneficial deal. There was no need for him to steal the Klimt. I’d offered to pay him what the job would have been worth. He knew I didn’t want it to be stolen.”

“Then why did he do it?”

Neal shook his head. His hand rested on top of hers. “Because it was there. And because he could.”

Sara was quiet. “Will you be okay?”

Neal shrugged. “I think so. Interpol thinks I’m holding out on them, but I managed to convince them I was as surprised by this as they were. And it’s not all smoke and mirrors - this wasn’t the plan. This was _never_ the plan.” He paused, drawing a deep breath. “Peter’s pissed.”

“I bet,” Sara said, mouth twisting wryly. “I would be, too.”

Neither of them said anything for some time. Neal looked out the window at a million-dollar view of London and forced himself to breathe, deeply and evenly. He couldn’t even begin to parse what he was feeling. Betrayal and anger, yes, because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down, and Taylor had left him to take the fall. It looked like he would escape unscathed, but it could have easily gone the other way, and Neal wasn’t sure Taylor would have cared. But no, Neal thought, that was unfair - Taylor probably would have cared, might have even found a way to pay for Neal’s legal counsel. That would have been just like him. Still, that didn’t change the fact that Taylor had known exactly where and how Neal was vulnerable, and he’d exploited those weak spots without a second thought. 

At the same time, Neal couldn’t help but feel some admiration for the absolutely masterful way Taylor had pulled the job off, conning the FBI and Interpol and Neal himself, getting away with everything he’d wanted. It was stunning to behold in its own way.

“I made a decision today,” Sara said, after a while. Neal looked at her. “I want to come back to New York for my radiation treatment.”

Neal blinked at her, too startled to react properly at first. “Really?” he finally managed.

“Yes, really.” She shrugged, then winced, as it apparently pulled at her incision site. “I know you can’t stay, and neither can Peter or Elizabeth. I could do it here, on my own, and I’d be fine. But after the last couple of days . . .” She looked up and met his eyes. “I don’t want to.”

“Good,” Neal said softly, and squeezed her hand. “I don’t want you to, either.”

They sat quietly, doing absolutely nothing, until someone knocked at the door. Neal got up to answer it and found Elizabeth on the other side. She hugged him even as she also shook her head, as though she didn’t know what to do with him. To Neal's relief, she didn't ask him what had happened. Clearly, she'd already heard about it from Peter. 

They ordered takeout for dinner. Elizabeth went out to get it and came back with bags of Indian food, better than it was possible to get even in New York. They ate in the living room of Neal's suite and played poker with a deck of cards El produced from her purse. El cleaned Neal out, or would have if they'd been playing for money. As it was, he only lost a little pride. He was distracted and for good reason. He was basically under house arrest, and he hadn't had much reassurance from Peter that he wasn't going to end up under _real_ arrest before all was said and done. 

It was late when Peter finally returned. Sara had fallen asleep on the sofa after her evening pain pill, and Neal and El had progressed from poker to Blackjack. Peter let himself in with his keycard, and Neal looked up, more than a little afraid of what he'd see on his face. 

Mostly, Peter looked tired. "Hi hon," El said, a note of sympathy in her voice. "Have you eaten? There's some saag paneer left."

"Is that the spinach stuff?" Peter asked. El nodded. "Yeah, that sounds good." He accepted the takeout container of spinach and cheese from her, along with a container of rice, and sat down in the armchair with a groan. El fetched another wine glass from the side board and poured Peter some out of the bottle she and Neal had been sharing. Then she sat down again, squishing herself into his chair. 

Neal relaxed, fractionally. For all that Neal and Peter had played games of cat and mouse over the years, Peter wasn't a predator and he didn't play with his prey. If Peter was going to arrest him, he'd have done it right away. But he didn't say anything; he leaned against the sofa from his position on the floor and stroked his hand lightly through Sara's hair. She sighed but didn't wake. 

"So," Peter said, after a minute or two. "The accepted story is that Taylor made you during the Yankee Stadium heist two years ago. He used you to make us look left while he went right. I’ve convinced Agent Doyle and her boss that you really didn’t know what Taylor intended. It doesn't look like you're going to end up getting arrested."

"That's . . . good," Neal said, cautiously. 

Peter snorted. "Yeah, it is." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge, then leaned forward and set it on the coffee table. 

Neal raised his eyebrows. "Peter."

"You know how this works,” Peter said. “One time immunity. I want to know what really happened today."

"Do you?" Neal asked him. "Because once I tell you, I can't take it back."

"I know," Peter said. "And I want to know anyway."

Neal sighed. Beside him, he felt Sara stir, opening her eyes. He put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. "What I said at Interpol wasn't a lie - this wasn't the plan. Gordon was never supposed to steal the Klimt. Our real target was a tiny painting in another gallery, barely worth anything at all except to Gordon himself. It was painted by his grandfather, a Viennese Jew. The plan was always to distract you and Interpol with the Klimt, while I got in and took it."

"And did you?" Peter asked. 

Neal nodded. "I did. There's a forgery hanging there now."

Peter let out a long breath, then took a long sip of wine. "Okay. And what about the rest? I still don't believe that all of this was a coincidence."

"It wasn't," Neal said, and glanced over at Sara before looking back at Peter. "And you know why I did it.”

Peter’s jaw tightened. “Dammit, Neal.” His gaze swung toward Sara. “Did you know?”

“I suspected,” Sara said, in a voice roughened by sleep. “Just like you did. But I didn’t know for sure until yesterday, when I caught Neal working on the second painting.”

“And it didn’t occur to you that you should maybe, I don’t know, _say something_?” Peter said, throwing his hands up in exasperation and almost dislodging El in the process.

“I thought about it,” Sara said. “But Neal assured me everything was under control.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Famous last words. And a great reason not to report an impending theft.” He shook his head, looking back toward Neal. “I should arrest you. I won’t,” he added, when Neal glanced at his badge on the table, “but I should.”

Neal decided he didn’t want to be sitting on the floor for this conversation. He pushed himself up, and Sara sat up on the sofa, making room for him to sit behind her. “Peter, listen. I know you’re angry -”

“Damn right I am.”

“- but I did everything I could to keep it - well, okay, not above-board. But the painting we were supposed to steal -”

“The painting that you _did_ steal,” Peter corrected, glaring. 

“- fine, that we did steal - it belonged to Gordon’s family. Or so he said,” Neal added, suddenly wondering. He couldn’t imagine why Gordon would have wanted it otherwise; it wasn’t worth anything. “I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”

“Well, now you know how I feel,” Peter said, harshly. “There are channels for that sort of thing, Neal. If the museum had known it had a piece of art that’d been looted by the Nazis, don’t you think they’d have bent over backwards trying to return it?”

“Those channels aren’t exactly open for guys like me and Gordon.”

“And whose fault is that, I wonder?” Peter retorted. 

Neal rolled his eyes. “Fine, Peter.” He looked away, then drew a deep breath. “I don’t know if you’re going to believe me or not, but this job - it was my last. I did it because I had to, not because I wanted to. It was fun, don’t get me wrong - right up until Gordon screwed me over, anyway - but it was my last job.”

“Why?” Peter demanded, watching him closely. “Why should I believe that?”

Neal had one arm wrapped loosely around Sara’s waist, his hand resting on her stomach. He tightened his hold briefly, careful to avoid putting pressure on either of her incisions. “Because other things are more important to me.”

Peter stared at him. Neal forced himself to meet his gaze without blinking, and at last Peter looked away. “I’m pissed as hell, Neal,” he said, sounding more tired than angry now. No, not tired - _disappointed_ , Neal realized with a pang. He loved sparring with Peter, but he hated disappointing him. “I’m pissed that you lied to me, and I’m pissed that you put so much at risk. This could have gone so much worse for you. You could have ended up back in prison, either here or in the States, and you’ve put me in a _terrible_ position with Interpol. I’m going to be hearing about this for months from Bancroft.” He shook his head. “You said this was your last job. Well, it’s also the last time I cover for you.”

Neal nodded. “Understood.”

“Good.” Peter sighed and shoved a forkful of saag paneer into his mouth. “Tomorrow, we’re all moving somewhere within the Bureau’s budget.”

“I can’t wait to see what that looks like in central London,” Neal said wryly. Peter glared but from the look on Elizabeth’s face, she’d been thinking exactly the same thing. 

“Actually,” Sara spoke up, “I have a place that’s well within your budget, and the location is superb. My apartment,” she added, when Peter looked confused. “I have a guest room. It’s not big, but it’s big enough.”

“ _Thank_ you, Sara,” Elizabeth said swiftly, before Peter could say anything. “That’s very kind of you. We’d love to.”

“Hon,” Peter protested around a mouthful of food. 

“Hush, Peter,” Elizabeth said, and to Neal’s surprise he did - probably more out of exhaustion than anything else. El must have thought so, too, because Peter had barely finished the last of his dinner before she was pulling him out of the chair, probably sensing that he was in danger of becoming one with it.

“Have a good night, you two,” she said, shoving her feet into her shoes. 

“Good night,” Neal said, seeing them to the door. He wasn’t going to say anything at all to Peter, who looked dead on his feet, but at the last moment he couldn’t help himself. “Peter,” he said. “Are we okay?”

Peter looked back at him over his shoulder. “Not right now.” Neal opened his mouth, but Peter raised his hand, cutting him off. “Ask me again in a week.”

Well, that was something. Ruining his friendship was Peter was only slightly behind going back to prison in terms of undesirable outcomes.

Neal closed the door behind them and turned back to Sara. The room was mostly dark, just a few spots of yellow light thrown by the lamps. He returned to his spot on the sofa and she curled up against him, head on his chest. “I noticed there was one lie you didn’t confess to,” Sara murmured. 

Neal sighed. “I think it would have been worse than everything else put together.” Everything else, after all, had been a professional deception. There was nothing personal - or new - in Neal trying to pull the wool over Peter’s eyes at the FBI. But lying to him about his engagement to Sara was a personal deception, and Neal didn’t think Peter - or El, for that matter - would forgive him quite so easily for that. “Don’t worry, I’ll just tell him we broke it off.”

“I think that’s going to be a hard sell,” Sara pointed out, “what with me coming to New York and all.”

Neal shrugged. “After you leave, then. I’ll say that we decided not to do long distance.”

Sara nodded. “That’s one idea.”

Neal looked down at her. “You have another?”

“I do,” she said, looking up at him. “We could make it true.”

Neal blinked, then frowned, wondering if he’d understood her correctly. “You mean . . .”

Sara shrugged - carefully, and with only one shoulder this time. “What do you say, Caffrey? Will you marry me?”

“What?” he managed. “Now?”

“No, not now,” she replied with a smile. “Don’t be ridiculous. Probably not even six months from now - I need to find a way to come back to the States, and that’ll involve either wrangling a new position out of Sterling-Bosch or finding a new job altogether. But eventually.” She sat up to look at him. “I know this isn’t the most romantic proposal, but we did have that already.”

“Hey,” Neal said, catching her hand. “Don’t apologize. I’ll take sincerity over romance every day.”

She poked him. “So?”

“Yes,” Neal said, smiling. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Though I’m sort of surprised you want to marry _me_ , after all of this.”

“Me too.” She looked away, out the window at the lights of London. “Before - after you ran off with Mozzie to Cape Verde - I just didn't think you were reliable enough. But I needed you, and you were here. Against all odds, and at considerable risk to yourself.” She looked back at him, eyes narrowing. “But you’d sure as hell have meant what you said to Peter about this being your last job. Like I said before: _plausible deniability_ has no place in this relationship.” 

He nodded once, seriously. “I know. And I meant what I said to Peter.”

“Good,” Sara said, leaning into him. She was quiet for a moment. “How’s Moz going to take it?”

Neal sighed. “I don’t know. But I think he’s started to resign himself these last few months to the idea that I won’t be going back to the life after my sentence is up. Eventually he’ll get over it.” He hoped so, at least. 

“Do you know what you’ll do instead?” 

Neal shook his head. “I have no idea. I think I’ll consult for the FBI until I figure it out, provided Peter doesn’t wash his hands of me after this. I’ve thought about a lot of things - art restoration, private security consultation. But I’m not sure.” And that was, if he was honest with himself, a little unnerving. He’d always wanted to have enough money not to worry about it, and now, for the first time, he wasn’t entirely sure how to go about accomplishing that. 

Sara reached for his hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “You’ll figure it out. I’ll help. How does that sound?”

“That sounds great,” Neal said, and pulled her closer. He closed his eyes and realized that even with so much still uncertain, he could imagine life after the anklet was off. What was more, it looked damn good. “Team Caffrey-Ellis.”

Sara gave a tiny short. “Don’t fool yourself. It’s going to be Ellis-Caffrey, if it changes at all.”

“Either way, I like the sound of it.”

Sara looked up at him, smiling. “Yeah, me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you enjoy the art? Then drop Angelita a [note](http://angelita26.livejournal.com/111069.html)!


	3. Epilogue

“Don’t. Touch me.”

As ways to be greeted at the end of a very long day, that wasn’t in Neal’s top ten. But he controlled his initial reaction and took a deep breath. “So, how was your day?” he asked, heading over to the kitchenette to uncork the bottle of wine he’d opened the night before. 

Sara glared at him as she passed by on the way to his bed. She was wearing yoga pants and a loose t-shirt out of Neal’s own closet. The radiation treatment had caused severe sunburn on her chest, and all of her own shirts were much too fitted for her to be able to wear. Neal liked seeing her in his clothes, but he knew this was just one more irritation on top of many others for her at the moment. 

“I was thinking we’d order in,” Neal tried, when Sara lay down without answering. “Thai food?”

“Whatever you want. I’m not hungry. I’m not nauseated,” she added, raising her head to glare at him. Neal, who’d been about to ask, closed his mouth. “I’m just not hungry. I’m _tired_.”

Neal considered his options. He put the wine bottle back on the counter and left his glass sitting on the table. He took his shoes off and loosened his tie before pulling it off altogether. The jacket went next, and he hung it up in his closet along with his slacks and his shirt. Then, clad only in his boxers, undershirt, and socks, he padded over to the bed, where Sara was lying with an ice pack tucked under one arm. He curled up on his side, facing her, and very carefully reached out to rest his hand on her stomach. 

Neither of them spoke for some time. Sara stared up the ceiling, hardly even acknowledging that Neal was there. Finally, all the breath leaked out of her in a long, slow sigh. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s really not.”

“It really is. You’re uncomfortable.”

“Which is not, in any way, your fault.” Sara shook her head, eyes still trained on the ceiling. “Do you regret it yet? Asking me to stay with you?”

“Not for a minute,” Neal said. Sara snorted, but the corners of her mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile. "Did it go okay today?"

"It went exactly the same as it has been going," she said with a grimace. "I did get to talk to Dr. Kessel for a few minutes. He's cautiously optimistic that they'll get all of it, which is probably the best I could hope for from him." Her hand sneaked down to cover Neal's where it lay on her stomach. "Winston Bosch called me."

Neal raised his eyebrows. "What did he want?"

"He - it was strange," Sara said, turning her head to look at Neal. "He wanted to know how I was, and I think he actually cared about the answer. He told me to take as much time as I needed, and that there would be a position at Sterling-Bosch for me when I was ready to come back."

Neal smiled. "Sara, that's great."

"Yeah. It is." She looked back up at the ceiling, and Neal watched the movement of her throat as she swallowed. "I asked if it might be possible for that position to be here in New York. He said it could be, if I was willing to make a lateral move."

Neal went very still. They hadn't spoken much about the possibility that she might move back to New York since she'd arrived. His anklet was off in a little more than two months now; he'd assumed they'd talk about it then. He hadn't thought that she would seriously entertain the idea for at least a year. "Are you?" Neal asked at last, careful not to sound too eager. 

"I might be.” Her fingers slid in between his own. "I might be." She fell silent again, but Neal could feel her slowly relaxing. Her shoulder touched his, and she sighed quietly. "How was your day?"

"Not bad," Neal said. “We might have a lead on _Portrait of a Lady in Black_. I managed to finally get in touch with Alex." Sara glanced at him a little sharply, and Neal shrugged, not quite apologetic about it. "She's one of few people who could fence something like that. I told her the FBI might be willing to make it worth her while if she let me know if Taylor contacted her."

"Do you think she will?"

Neal sat up, leaning against the headboard. "She might. Peter's willing to offer her immunity for quite a few of her alleged crimes, plus reward money. It's not as much as she'd get fencing the painting, but I think she's a little tired of the life. It gets old after a while, and none of us are as young as we were. She might take the out if it comes along."

"Mmm," Sara said. She slid over, lay her head in his lap. Neal smoothed her hair back and stroked his thumb down the curve of her neck. "And how is Peter?"

"He's . . . thawing," Neal said, and grimaced where Sara couldn't see it. For the last week, since they’d returned from London, Neal had been walking on eggshells. Peter was taking heat for having lost the Klimt portrait, probably more than he was letting on, and Neal didn't like to think about what kind of political capital he was spending to deflect attention from Neal himself. He'd apologized again, sitting next to Peter on the long plane-ride home, but he didn't think it'd helped much. 

"The thing is, Neal," Peter had said, looking at him while trying not to disturb Elizabeth, who slept with her head on his shoulder, "when you say you're sorry, you don't mean you wish you hadn't done it. You mean you wish you hadn't been caught."

"No," Neal had said quickly. "No. I mean I wish it wasn't causing trouble for you. I did what I did because I had to for Sara, but I never meant for it to cause as much trouble for you as it has."

"You never do," Peter had said, looking away. "You never do. And someday, Neal - someday soon, in fact - I'm not going to be in a position to protect you. And you're either going to figure out that doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still wrong or you're going to end up right back where you started."

"I told you," Neal had said, very quietly. "It was my last job."

Peter had looked back at him. "I know. And I want to believe you, Neal. I do."

Neal hadn't known what to say to that. A week later, he still didn't. Peter had loosened up around him, somewhat; he and El had come over for dinner the night Sara arrived, and things had felt almost normal between them then. But Neal couldn't shake the feeling that Peter was wary of him, and that, Neal didn't like. 

Sara was looking up at him, Neal realized. "You just need to give it time, Neal," she said, quietly. "He'll trust you again. If you and I can get past everything, then you know you and Peter can." She squeezed his hand, and he felt it there: the smooth hardness of the ring on her finger. They'd chosen it together only a few days earlier. It wasn't nearly as extravagant as the one he'd offered her that day at the Empire State Building, but he knew she didn't care. 

"I know," Neal said, and felt reassured despite himself. He sank down a little in the bed, so that her head rested more on his chest than his stomach, and thought about the future. He should have felt anxious - should have wondered if he and Sara were moving too fast, should have wondered how he was going to make a living, should have wondered if Peter would ever really look at him the same way again - but he just didn't. He had Sara, and he knew in his bones that ultimately, he and Peter would be okay. 

He pressed his lips to the top of Sara's head. "I know," he repeated, and closed his eyes.

_Fin._


End file.
